Time did not pass in the Otherworld.

Annwn remained as it was first spoken, a place of stainless perfection to reflect the glories of the cauldron of Inspiration. All beauty surrounded the cauldron, from the maidens tending it to the wheeling sky above. The forests were thick with game, the fields and gardens ever abundant, the domestic beasts fat and friendly.

Yet time did indeed pass in the world so inexorably bound to Annwn. Time passed, legends failed or adapted, they conformed to new ideals, they faded out of memory. Soon, a madness of twisted darkness ringed beautiful Annwn. Yet, because they were of Annwn, they were beautiful to themselves, however bizarre and terrifying to mortal perception.

Time passed on with its rolling eye towards the future, and eventually, around that expanse of calamity and chaos, the sweetly pastoral lands of lambs and good shepherds created a haven of heaven on pristine shores.

Humans were decidedly psychotic and in a terrible hurry to leave behind what had been primitive.

"I am still king, Gwyn. Trotting about in your war-stained battle armor and bellowing about your eternal feud and licking the Bear's balls changes naught."

"I was named king, Arawn. I. I lead the dead from the cold battlefields, I call the hunt to begin in the first breaths of Autumn!"

Arawn turned frost black eyes to the younger upstart, ticking cold fingernails to the marble of his fabled throne.

"Humans named you king only because they forgot that I was so. Human thought and memory has no place here. Go back and play the Bear's good fellow if it is all that important to you."

"You sit before the very cauldron of Inspiration and cut down what could make us great once more," Gwyn challenged, his piercing eyes of silvered black showing a maelstrom of energy.

"We are great. I need no audience of mewling humans to prove my grandeur, any more than I need the trappings of their desperate race to extinction," Arawn murmured, disinterested, his gaze sliding aside to his dogs. The terrible beasts were restive and snapping and snarling among themselves.

"Yet, my lord, the Summer Court shivers and shakes and finds their own way to walk towards destruction," Gwyn pointed out archly. Arawn paused, arching a fine and dark brow, attending Gwyn's words with far more thought than he normally would.

"There is unbalance, my lord," Mallt murmured, the woman endlessly honing the tools of the Hunt upon a sill overlooking the wide forest.

"They may die their own deaths, they are not like we here," Arawn pointed out easily with a flick of icy fingertips, "But now I am curious. Return to your retinue, Gwyn. Seek the apples which fall from this tree if it pleases you, but bring no dishonor upon us. For if it enters this place, all shall be lost."

"The cauldron will boil no food for the coward," Gwyn responded with a flourishing bow, a vow and reminder alike.

"So it is, so shall it be done," Arawn nodded, sliding back into his eerie still which was ever in motion. Gwyn bowed once more, and turned with a sweep of his draperies to stride from the hall. The maidens of the cauldron giggled and whispered among themselves.

"Shall I watch, my lord?" Mallt inquired some time later, provoking an amused quirk of smile from the man.

"Why not hunt him, my dear? It would add a delightful air of urgency to his intrigues."

Mallt laughed once as she immediately was prepared to the hunt. To any hunt. Her head tossed wide eyed like a mare scenting blood before she bowed, her voice a sandpaper caress of irony.

"You are indeed still king."

It was still Pharlen's to find what was happening. And it kept boiling down to angels falling.

If there was one soul that knew of such things, it was Jack Scott. Yet, ages ago, his memory had been scrambled like a pan of eggs, as if to prevent just that moment. The moment when Pharlen would find herself plagued with angels, and needed to know why.

She had not become the head of the Firetakers Division because she was cute.

Jack drew in air that was heavy and hot, and it tasted like mead on his tongue. He stood in a world brimming with greenhouse gasses and reptile crap alongside the time lord, and Knew. He was not young again, but he was in the time of his true youth, just as Pharlen was.

The Mesozoic Era, the Triassic Period. The Age of Reptiles. The Ocean was vast and shallow and warm.

There, he could remember. And he spoke for the cheap price of vintage cigarettes and the freedom to run in that wild land to the content of his soul and body. He told the story of his conception and birth.

There was her bucket of red herrings.

Jack gave her a coyote grin.

"Mayhaps you should awaken Him," he crooned. Pharlen glanced to Jack with a knit of her fine ivory brow.

"It's true, it's true, the crown has made it clear, The climate must be perfect all the year; A law was made a distant moon ago here, July and August cannot be too hot..." Jack sang, a strange sight when he was shifting from humanoid form to that of a large coyote.

"Maybe," she responded, reaching out to ruffle his fur, "But if what you say is so, I have a larger problem. Desdenova spends the summer with him well before the time when he sleeps."

The coyote's mocking grin and sparkling gaze seemed to say it all: it sucked to be her.

"The Eye will open and return you when it is time if you do not return yourself by then," Pharlen called to the beast as it turned to run and run and run across the unstained wilds. She turned herself to the Eye as it opened behind her, amber and translucent, and was gone.

"Simply not a more congenial spot for happily ever after," she muttered, stepping out of the Eye once more, this time before the extensive wardrobe she kept for her work.

A pale sterling gown, a surcoat of lavender trimmed in ermine, her hair severely pulled from her face to accommodate a hennin and veil. She drew in her breath and inspected her appearance in the mirror. Annoyed, she removed her glasses.

All that was left to do was to borrow a stately Maestoso Lipizzaner mare and go forth into the madness.

Mould followed his movements. Spores erupted when he rested, spreading contamination wherever they drifted. He followed Her as she ran willy nilly after a child of the Second Race, and chortled at the short sight that drew her to the boy.

Oh, he was pretty. So pretty. He would grow into a beautiful man, he would represent all the prestige that She could never gain by her own ways and deeds. Wither roiled a wide circle around the lad.

He could taste the power the child held already in hand. Envision the power he would hold as an adult. Oh so very very tempting, but Wither was no fool. This child of the Second Race was never left unattended.

His uncle stood straight and cold, a gesture bringing the boy back to his side instantly. The older man's hawks eyes picked out the aberration bleeding mold onto the pastureland. Before Wither could gather himself, the man snarled a rune, forcing the fae into easy vision.

"The sun is hot. Speak quickly or I will not release you until you are a mat of of collapsed fungi."

Wither snarled, but did not hold anything against the man. He had a child to protect, after all, and it wasn't just the she-bears who were so dangerous when they had cubs.

"Mind thine child, crownless prince," Wither hissed, "I can see he is well guarded, but not all are wise enough to look past your command."

"That is not much to give in return for release," the man pointed out, lifting his chin as his eyes narrowed on Wither's shadowed form.

"Beauty has been thine downfall before, crownless prince. Do not let it take from you thine precious treasure."

The man exhaled in faint disgust, annoyance. He nodded, and spoke once more, freeing Wither from the summoning. Wither quickly withdrew to the shadows of the woods. Watching. Watching as the man watched him, in turn, a protective arm around the child's shoulders.

Twice he warned in the old ways and old rites. One warning remained, but Wither wasn't about to risk being forced into the hot summer sunshine once more.

Finally, the man turned the child from the open field, leading him to a charming and quaint little cave turned cottage. They both hesitated as a basterna suspended between two white mules moved up the road.

It was a pretty little conveyance, elaborately carven, attended by several liveried men. The man frowned, glancing to the child beside him. The boy returned the gaze, clearly uneasy. Wither stared, taking in the scene in a dreadful sort of eagerness.

A door opened.

It was poorly made, and bled intentions and ether. It spoke of realities beyond, of places that were not connected to the world sphere.

A girl appeared, a pretty young lass of some sixteen years. Dark hair, bright eyed, wearing bizarre clothing, carrying a large basket. Before she could speak, the man shooed the boy to her, and took her arm. Startled, the girl reversed course, and turned.

Closing behind her that doorway between realities.

It was closed, and yet, Wither could clearly taste where it led to. He smiled, a ghastly thing.

"Warned him, I did, I did, and beauty was again his downfall...." Wither chuckled and gloated.

The basterna came to a halt, and Wither watched in glee as Eithne so daintily disembarked from the cavea where she had reposed upon her journey. He watched fury bend and contort her features.

Moments later, her ire had destroyed the glamours of her comfort: her manservants ran away, terrified rats, the mules returned to confused hedgehogs. The very basterna was nothing more than a nutshell.

Yet, she found where the doorway had been. She twined fingers around the residue of time and space sundered. She tasted it on her tongue.

Eithne squealed delight, hopping, and grasped at those fading tendrils. She warped away into a rising wisp of smoke, and was gone. Wither chortled, and waited. The girl-child's doorway would have quickly faded to nothing, but Eithne had found it. She tainted it.

Wither could follow at his leisure.

It had been a luxurious glory, a hedonist's paradise. Once, a shining gem among the beauties of an uptown boulevard, now, another cavity ridden tooth in a chain of decay. 'Mother Moon's Sanitary Turkish Baths and Plunge' was long abandoned. The springs that once provided the hot water for the Bath still flushed through the building, leaving a grotesque patina of black mold and calcium over the once fine tile work.

Tropical plants once cultivated in pots and troughs had escaped, cracking through grout and cement work to find dirt, creating its own media in the decay of the furnishings and small creatures that had found their way into the building. Lacking full light, the plants were spindly and pale, bizarre. Where frost and heat had killed them back, they left their death throes traced in glistening blacks. It was eternally humid and fetid within the ruins.

In the main bath, Wither found its refuge. It created a throne for itself of mycelium inoculated brick and stone, the bones of poor souls who had perished exploring the old bath house, those who had been dumped there by their murderers.

Colonies of bryozoans turned the shallow remains of the pool slimy and clogging the drains and spillovers. Where they rotted, they were shining but stank. Insects of all sorts thrived as they will, endlessly turning all into dirt.

Wither sulked within the comfort of its ghastly seat. It glared sightlessly over the dark and wet decay that had so delighted it.

RhyDin was indeed a wonder, a wonderland, a playground. Following silly Eithne, Wither had encountered not just a new world, but new thought. And Her. Her. She. Pretty-Pretty-Pretty. It supposed that she must have a name, but that did not matter to it. She was Pretty-Pretty-Pretty. Thrice blessed.

Silver hair. Pure silver hair. How it desired to touch those pristine strands simply to watch them tarnish under its bony fingertips. Skin that wanted to fade into shadow, falsely pale, how wondrous it would shimmer and shine as it rotted in shallow water. Eyes so perfectly amethyst, their glories would corrupt and collapse into fetid gelatin.

She was a cagy one, she was. She told him of RhyDin, but told Wither nothing at all, in truth. Nothing that it couldn't have learned by itself. Yet it gave her three coins of fairy gold: Struck with the profile of Arawn upon one face, and the Cauldron of Inspiration upon the other.

Wither's allegiances were clear in those coins, but it never dreamed that Pretty-Pretty-Pretty would not try to spend them. She was not like the females Wither knew. It reflected upon that once more.

It met her again, at the local inn. She chatted as if she believed that there was some good nature within its boney frame. Beside her...

Wither shuddered, teeth crumbled in mossy mold rattling against each other.

That damned Desert elf.

Pretty-Pretty-Pretty admitted that she had been dead. Dead. Buried. And yet now, walking and vibrant and shining. She should belong to Wither. She should decay for it. Wither reached to take her, she belonged to it, she had escaped its hold.

The heat, the blazing heat, the scorching desert, hounds with steely jaws and dry, so dry, not a molecule of moisture...

That damned Desert elf. It drove Wither away with contempt.

What was it to the Desert? Wither roiled over that endlessly. What was it to him? It was none of his business. It was none of his wanting or care or anything. The Desert had no place for a woman at his side, certainly not that one.

The Desert should lay upon his cursed beads and croon to his blasted hounds and be content.

Withers twiggy fingertips tapped upon a shattered and mold entwined skull. It was not there to collect lovelies which had slipped away from its corroding grasp. It was there to seek.

According to Gwyn, to keep that moron Eithne out of trouble. Wither muttered irritably. It had managed to act just as foolishly as the fae woman simply out of greed. Thus the Desert was there to remind it of its tasks.

Damned Desert.

Gemethyst had filled Benjamin's head with dozens of tales of her exploits as a thief and rogue in the dungeon crawling circuit, and therefore had no one but herself to blame when she found herself being abducted from her nice morning tea by the young man. Leaving his housekeeper in charge, Benjamin dumped Gemethyst into a cart drawn by Star, and started off.

Fortunately, Gemethyst was never truly without the tools of her trade, so she gave in amiably to his desire to storm the dungeons of the nearby manor house, long since collapsed. Actually, it sounded quite a lot of fun, and Gemethyst was chafing a bit at resting and recovering.

Jack appeared just as Star arrived at their destination. An old barn still standing. Jack scoffed at all this adventuring talk, but of course, he followed after Benjamin, lagging back in order to get a few kisses from Gemethyst, which she gladly gave.

Ancient steps led downwards, into a cellar or hallway under the barn, and Benjamin paused there to wait for Gemethyst and Jack, excitedly calling to them. He paused, his head tilting. He could see a beam of light, like that from a flashlight, moving around in the lower level.

It occurred to him very strongly that he ought to follow that light. Ordinarily, Benjamin would question such a compulsion, but that one fit right into his high spirits and curiosity. He promptly went trotting down the stone steps, his own flashlight out and passing side to side through the darkness.

Gemethyst yelped out something just as she saw the top of Benjamin's head disappear down the steps, and rushed to catch his shoulder.

The shoulder she caught was not the warm and smoothly muscled one belonging to Benjamin. Burlap and slime slipped under her fingers. Slowly and disconcertingly as an owl, Wither turned its head entirely to leer at her.

Repulsed, Gemethyst scrambled back, her knife drawn, to find herself caught in Jack's iron grip. She promptly squeezed to his side, her amethyst eyes wide and round.

"Where is Benjamin, what have you done with him?!" she demanded in a sharp shrill.

Where were they? Was it the same dry old barn of stone and timber and dust...? She could no longer see the open stair way. The stone walls glistened with water mosses and lichen, fungus ran its own riot around perimeter. The very floor was squishy and fetid.

"Pretty-Pretty-Pretty, I would never," Wither insisted, because of course, he would. Jack watched the being with a rictus grin stretched across his face.

"I do not recall giving you permission to touch what is mine," he noted in a cold and flat voice, "But my memory is not what it was."

"No, no, no," Wither whispered a lilting rasp, turning in full and raising twiggy fingers embalmed in burlap rag and creosote. "But here is darkness and shadows and decay, what say have you, here, where there is no king?"

Wither glided back a pace, empty eye sockets taking in Jack, then Gem. Benjamin, it seemed to be Benjamin, could be heard below. Moving things and perhaps even believing Gem and Jack were with him. He was in no harm.

"Where the ghosts and shadows lurk? I have more say than you, ghoul. She is mine. You may not touch her," Jack responded, reaching for Gem's shoulder to pull her back against him to further his claim. No matter if it might inhibit Gem from using her daggers.

"He is..." but then Gemethyst thought better of speaking. She didn't want to say the wrong thing here, where it might harm Jack. She eyed Wither and sank a bit deeper into ribbons at Jack's side.

"Silver, silver shines bright," Wither pointed out, as if this would give him some meagre claim. Yet, Jack was still there, with his far more tangible ways and means. Boney fingers steepled and laced, the void of gaze turning back to Jack.

"Tis an empty place here. Lovely and wet and decaying." Oh, oh, it was simply out and about looking at real estate. Certainly not following closer and closer Pretty-Pretty-Pretty Gem. Certainly not infecting the dry and arid barn with its essences.

Yet that tangent stopped dead as the Winter laid his claim.

Jack sniffed. And sniffed again the Fae's scent. His eyes narrowed as he recognized a note beneath the near overwhelming decay. He licked his lips before speaking one word. One name.

"Eithne."

Gemethyst did not know that name. But she did have the coins that Wither had gifted to her, and she needed to give them to Jack, having now been reminded of it. Still, perhaps it might help him now?

So she dug into her belt and pulled out the three coins, on one side of which was the image of a kingly male, and the other a cauldron. She pushed them into one of Jack's hands. Who was it? Arawn? Arwyn? She was unschooled in these things.

Wither's eyesockets narrowed, and that smile grew wide as a rotted Jack O'Lantern kicked open by wayward teens. A few garbled words escaped him, he bit them back before they formed fully. He seemed to swallow, as if his mouth began to water uncontrollably. Then, so politely: "For what shall I say to thee these things?"

There was a hellish glee igniting around him, as if Jack had spoken the magic word. He had, indeed, yet Gemethyst interrupted all that. It stared at the elf woman flatly. Still?

Still, she had not set the coins down, nor tried to spend them? Wither was startled, yet it did not show. Nonchalance bled through him. The fairy golds were just golds. His gaze ticked aside to them once before returning to Jack, piety wrapped in shabby and mouldy vestments.

Jack glanced at the coins and the portrait they displayed.

"Hir yw'r dydd a hir yw'r nos, a hir yw aros Arawn," he murmured. 'Long is the day and long is the night, and long is the waiting of Arawn.' Jack's grip on Gem tightened, clawlike enough to be uncomfortable to the little elf.

"Yessss." Wither hissed, eye sockets narrowed before he played a mild and friendly card, corrupt as it was. He shrank back like a flickering flame of black. Who would have dreamed the little thief would not have... who could have dreamed the little thief was under the Winter King's arm?

"Thrice I say to you: Beauty, Grace, Dishonor."

Gemethyst thought she could still hear Benjamin, his voice sounding amused and laughing, distant underground. She worried for him, though he seemed to be in no danger.

"Did he curse you?" Gemethyst demanded, outraged for Jack's sake.

"Nay. I would not curse so fair and powerful a lord," Wither crooned, though he also spoke quickly lest Jack take Gem's words, "He asked, yes he did, he asked. Of Eithne. She. She is Beauty, she is Grace, she is Dishonor."

"His kind cannot curse me, darling," Jack reassured Gemethyst, "It seems, ghoul, that you are not only seeking Eithne, but me. Why?"

The butter Wither had was dank and flabby, but it did not hesitate to use it. The silver of his tongue long tarnished yet still silver.

"There is no king here, M'Lord. None. No one to guide the brazen goats, none to herd the pleasant sheep. Yet, here are you. Why not thine court, shining one?"

Jack knew where Benjamin was. Where Star was. He and Gem and Arawn's minion were Elsewhere. Standing just outside RhyDin reality.

Gemethyst relaxed at Jack's reassurances, but was still not perfectly sure. However she backed down her stance and merely leaned into his ribbons and his tight hold, eyes not leaving Wither for a moment.

"It is Summer." Jack responded evenly. Jack's court was a Winter one. Summer was sleepy time for the lot of them. He looked about their dank and dark surroundings.

"I will give you free advice. Do not think any of the people populating RhyDin are sheep."

Gem nodded to Jack's words. Had she not told Wither to be careful who he pissed off here?

That was not the answer Wither desired, yet it was uncertain how to roundabout it to find more. It bowed his cowled head to the free advice, for anything free was either trash or treasure.

It picked at those words to see which it was. Gem had said so also, and he had met the cursed desert elf and the vicious boy-man son of hers. Been tempted to toy with the autumn faes mind. And now.

"It is heard, Glorious Lord. Summer, ah, it is summer." Wither hated summer. Wither hated winter. Both could dry him to dust in their extremes.

"So visiting, yes, you are visiting this place as the court sleeps away the angry day-star?" Wither queried, for information was worth working for.

Gem tipped her head to the side as she listened. Wither was like a magpie, pecking and pecking, trying to pick up what treasure may be set down, what words might be spun gold and which might be airy strands of nothing. She squinted at Wither.

"Magpie."

"You have friends of surpassing beauty and power, Pretty-Pretty-Pretty," Wither noted off hand, a sullen seeming glance to her. "Because a thing that shines may also rot, glairy and goo."

"Yes, I have been very blessed in these," Gemethyst agreed, though in her heart she felt she did not deserve such wonders, and knew it full well. The sullen look brought out her cat's grin, sharp and small and sweetly painful.

All fae went for the silver. What they did with it after was another story. He knew the autumnal was fishing. But for what?

"Arawn sent you to ... what? Watch Eithne? Not surprising she would come here," Jack murmured, watching the other fae. Stars exploded into existence in his eyes.

"Arawn, Arawn, my sweet lord, whoever said it was Arawn?" Wither grinned so very wide, because of course, Jack was quite correct.

Damned golds, damned thief too smart for her own good, and what was it thinking, with all of that silver silver hair of course...

"T'were the young one. Good Sir Gwyn, of course. For she is his, given to him, though he would never have one such as her. A poor gift she was and is. She offended the Oak, you see," There, the treacle of his tone sounded crystallized into shattered amber: She offended the Oak. It was a grave offense.

"She is left to her own devices? I think not. Gwyn or Arawn, either would not let her loose upon the worlds." Jack made great assumptions as to the nature of those great Fae and this Eithne. The name was so damn familiar. Like he had her scent but could not find trace of it.

"Perhaps she is here to spy as you are, child of Autumn."

"No, no, I watch, I do. I watch and see that she is not dishonorable. For that would be a great shame upon my lord Sir Gwyn," Wither insisted, so pious and sweet. "See, for I am here. That she may not bring further shame upon his court. The Oak has passed on, should Eithne learn that here and now it is so, she would bring again dishonor, for the Daughters of the Oak remain."

But spying? Wither said neither yay nor nay. To protest it would cement it, to agree to it would condemn. In any case, what else was a fae to do in a strange land? But to relate all it had learned, of course, of course.

"And if she is dishonorable?" Jack inquired though his omnipresent grin

"What is the fate of any dishonorable?" Wither countered.

"Oh, I am sure that is not what I asked."

Gem had opened her mouth to trot out some words, and then Jack spoke. She paused and very carefully closed her mouth. She learned wisdom at his side, see? She gave him a look that spoke of utter devotion and sincere respect. Jack acted like he got that look all the time from all the people.

"...Likely, Gwyn will gift her to another who has nay heard of her antics yet," Wither responded, dryly as he might, and honest. "She is a princess, you see. And as yet has left all of her foolery to Men and not of the fae. But still, a princess of old refinement, though I would not doubt she is Fomorian blood through and through."

Wither's shoulders shuddered and jerked neath its cobwebby cowl. As if he would spit, but was far too refined. Also, lacking probably the mechanics for the act.

"No one is perfect," Jack quipped before turning shrewd, "Her dishonor would also give Gwyn an excuse to step on over here, eh?"

Gem eyed Jack and then slanted look back to Wither.

"T'would be irresponsible for a lord to not see to the comportment of ones vassals, sweet lord," Wither murbled so piously, overlong fingers steepled as if in prayer. "And see, thee are here, also. A happy coincidence. Yet, it is not desired that she should again shame Sir Gwyn."

"I wonder," Jack mused, looking up and over the Fae's head, "What the king is doing tonight?"

Jack cast his hook and waited patiently to see what he may catch.

Wither simply smiled his mold befouled grin. Jack cast well, but Wither was old and wiley himself.

"Unknown, Shining King, for before me is only thee, and I have not granted fealty to thine glorious self. I cannot look back, or forth."

Gemethyst studied Wither, thinking. Thinking. Listening to the two of them spar and prick at each other. Learning.

"One cannot have two masters. You are not cold enough for my court," Jack responded, his tone disinterested. But of course, he was interested. Very interested.

In the distance, and from below, there was distinctly Benjamin's voice. Baffled in tone rather than angered or afeared. Wither took note of it with a slight movement of his head.

"Nay, one may not," it agreed, almost distracted, but yes, far from it. Far. "For one must needs have the finest and bravest and most beautiful and glorious and honorable, for the cauldron will not boil food for the coward."

A crumb tossed of information tossed. Its lower parts were fading into dark and dank mist.

"I am not of a wintery or summery soul, it is so."

Jack grinned and waggled his fingers at the disappearing Fae. If he caught the Fae's meaning, he did not give it away.

"Tell your master I said hello."

"Be careful of my son," Gemethyst added. Wither had met her son, and it had not gone well at all. Jack arched a brow at that warning. Seemed this Fae had gotten around.

Why send Benjamin off at all? Wither seemed to enjoy gazing upon beauty. A question that remained unasked and unanswered as Wither faded into a fall of spores, rasping laughter sounding in its fade.

It was too dry there for Wither's wants, now. The moisture infecting the barn drew away into itself. The light from the stairs leading downwards jogged and bobbed. No longer Otherwhere, they were back in the barn.

"Jack?!" Benjamin yelled, jocular and confused, "Gem?! Damnit, stop it! If you bite me again, I'll bite you."

A puzzled look still held in Gemethyst's eyes as she called out to Benjamin, moreso as she wondered suddenly why had they gotten so separated?

"Ben? We are..." And she looked around. Back in the old barn. She shook herself.

"I wonder if our Ben Jammin' has a passenger. Hmm?" Jack mused, giving Gem a gentle push forward so they might find the answer to the mystery.

Benjamin climbed up the stairs, becrowned in hissing half-grown opossums. He carried Old Mama Possum in his arms, and was trying to work loose a flashlight that had been duck taped to the poor creature. Her half-grown kittens were all over Benjamin.

Gemethyst's silver brows rose in surprise at a flashlight bearing possum.

"Who could have done that..??" She moved forward to aid Ben.

Benjamin stopped short on seeing them and sputtered a laugh.

"Someone taped a torch to Mama and set her loose. It took me a while to catch her."

Mama seemed fine with being held, though she grumbled and hissed now and then. ?The kittens were less sure, but clung to the actor.

Jack cacawed a laugh when it became clear what was assaulting the Bright Star.

"It seems you have more foundlings, Ben Jammin'. You must make sure the crows do not eat those kits."

Benjamin passed Mama to Gem so he could get at the tape, working it off of the animal without taking too much fur with it. Yes, he'd been nipped by one or more of the kittens. Mama was aware that she was being helped.

"Oh, no, Mama has her den, I just make sure the crows leave the kittens alone," he laughed.

Gemethyst stopped for a moment to take up Mama and a few of the kittens. She leaned up to kiss Ben on the cheek.

"You are such a knight. I do love you. Did you see our odd acquaintance, Wither? He was the fellow I met in the market and then again at the inn. He gave me the three gold coins and so I gave them to Jack, just now. He was here and all scarey-vellous."

"Scarey-vellous?" Benjamin repeated with a laugh, finally freeing Mama from the tape. He shrugged amiably, "No, I've never heard of him..."

Lexius had given her what she needed to follow the trail Wither left between the realities. Pharlen smirked ironically. The elf made sure he'd gotten a swipe at her, too, with that chatty little crystal spider. Devil.

Of course, Pharlen would have done much the same to Lexius if she had half a chance. Tormenting each other was their way of showing affection for each other. Or they were simply showcasing their skills at torment. Pharlen was quite sure Lexius cackled hilariously over watching Pharlen getting run around by the spider he'd created the moment no one was looking.

All things considered, though, it was funny. Pharlen was quite used to small children and creatures grabbing her hand and going on and on. That allowed her to stop the forward progress of the urgent little tracking spider and make sure she was prepared for anything.

Anything being quite a relative term.

Pharlen could easily move between realities and times within the scope of Earth. Otherwise, she needed to rely on walking through the Umbra, using skills learned from garou and dimension hoppers alike.

The doorway she made opened into a wide swath of swamp, a sky of olive and sulphur infused with dark maroons and reds. Drowning cypress and sycamore clawed uselessly for the sky as the wet black peat morass dragged them inevitably to their demise. Giant deer bellowed distress, bogging down under the weight of their own antlers. A great bear lay sodden and decaying even with its last breaths.

A place of life and death, brutal and beautiful, though the air was thick with water, with methane and carbon dioxide. Pharlen looked it over, and dropped a light coracle into the treacherous water, stepping into it carefully. She took up a pole, and pushed herself across the deceptively smooth water.

Long ago petrified, a tall section of tree trunk marked an island of sorts, a mire of weed and brush, the remains of a fallen earthwork dome of some sort open to the bog around it. Pharlen eyed the scene, frowning.

Such logs were important in prehistory, she knew. Petrified relatively quickly from the mineral laden waters, they were often placed as center post to burial mounds. Intricately and inscrutably carven, they were never structural. Always ceremonial.

A burial mound that had never been a place of burial. A throne was constructed of roots, branches, bone, hide, sinew, all covered in a patina of moss and peat.

Wither was an ancient, that much Pharlen knew. A being of the dawn of creation, an experiment of Life in the reality of Fairy, there needed not be any of the relationships and rules of the real worlds.

There would be no tragic or horribly ironic tale of beautiful young Wither turning from something shining and lovely to what it had become. It simply was. An archetype as much as Jack, as Arawn, as Pharlen, herself.

At that moment, though Pharlen could not know it, Audacity drew to an inside straight.

Gas wrung from the decay pooled underneath a nearly skeletal water lily leaf, half submerged. At that moment, the leaf gave way, and a huge bubble of gas rose through the murk to surface at just the right point neath the leather and wood coracle Pharlen stood upon to throw the balance awry.

Pharlen found herself half falling to the bog and water, reaching quickly for the roots as she felt the water close around her, cool and thick. Teeth fastened around her ankle, easily biting through the leather desert boots she wore. Just as she realized that, she was yanked under the swamp water.

A kelpie. Pharlen stared at the hideous gaunt as it roiled and gamboled at its ease in the dark waters. It struck at her several times, hooves and head, forcing her further and further downwards.

Just as she hung buoyant of neutral, the kelpie sneered, and drove in to help itself of the still warm flesh. Pharlen struck out a hand to catch the creature by the nostrils, allowing it to shove her while she pulled free her buck knife, slashing across the kelpie's thick throat. The water filled with the acidic blood and the mad thrashing of the beast.

Pharlen pushed away from the creature quickly, the blood tainting the water burning the delicate gills lining her inner throat. She shouldered from her coat, leaving that to confuse the creatures drawn to the blood like sharks, and swam for the surface.

In nature, the albino is often at disadvantage, as its lack of coloration draws the attention of predators...

A shining beacon of white with the tang of blood drew them thick and vicious. Pharlen met them with bared teeth and a buck knife.

Entropy threw down a handful of damp bills onto the cigar ash strewn gaming table. Chance paused and eyed the being.

"No sweaty boob money, that's disgusting."

"Kitty's kitty," Audacity grunted, shuffling the deck. Once. Twice. Thrice. Pharaoh Shuffled. Three cards landed before each player.

"What are you here for anyhow? Don't you have thermodynamics to disarray?" Fortune sneered, leaning back with a mug of beer.

"Isn't that the sweaty boob money?" Luck smirked, picking up its cards and leaning back to inspect them.

"Why wasn't I invited, you are expanding," Entropy replied as if it hadn't heard the others. Gazes exchanged. Audacity grinned, eventually.

"Just playing the averages and odds."

"As falls the firmament," Entropy smirked, looking at its cards. Her cards. One needed female breasts, pendulous and hot, to achieve sweaty boob money, after all.

"Just spit it out. You're playing with the big kids, Entropy, not your sterile little lab rats," Luck snorted, annoyed as it arranged its cards in hand.

"I'm in. You're pushing into other realms. I can taste what I want most there. I want that," Entropy announced with a toss of head. The others stilled and eyed her.

"You're in...?" Luck drawled.

"It's your own fault. I felt the spread. I know what you're doing. I want my just due, or I could
ask just what your game is about upon the planes of the Powers That Be," Entropy demanded, lifting her chin against the irritated glares of the others. She sneered.

"I thought I was playing with the big kids."

"We have Rules, Entropy, every one of our Games has Rules, and you'd best learn to play by them," Fortune informed her icily. Entropy laughed, throwing her cards across the table.

"Rules? You have no rules! You have sets of arbitrary averages and a few constants which still alter by means of your own wills. You have artificial laws and mechanics, nothing that can be successfully tested, nothing that is Real. You may as well invite in Faith, at least he's pretty to look at!"

"And you do?" Audacity smirked, sheer acid as he watched her.

"I am Entropy. I am Law. I am a constant. I was spoken by the Powers That Be to create this reality. You lot just... rolled in."

Luck drew a hit off its cigar and regarded the wet and chewed in thoughtfully in the silence following Entropy's outburst. It finally smiled to her, charming and warm.

"Have care, dear Lady Entropy. You are Law only here. Where we go, there is no Law."

"There will be," she hissed, "Deal the cards."

"You lost the first hand already," Audacity reminded her coolly, "You will have to wait for us to play our cards, and then you're going to need more sweaty boob money if you want to keep in."

"No. I am Entropy. Deal now!"

"There's Rules, Entropy. You're not in your snug little place of power, dragging constants into oblivion. You are in our place. You play our way," Luck replied flatly, studying its cards.

"I say let her have her way," Chance shrugged, tossing its cards to the middle of the table, "I actually want to see her trying to impose Law on the Fairy realms."

Audacity and Luck burst out laughing. They both threw in their cards at once and split the Kitty between them.

"More sweaty boob money, Entropy," Audacity smiled, coldly serene, "And pray we do not play strip poker next."

"What, are you kidding? I'll kill you all if you even suggest it," Luck shuddered.

Eithne found her way around Rhydin quickly. Soon enough, she had some old and wealthy geezer enthralled with her, a wide eyed and foolish young man enamored of her, and now, all she needed...

She needed.

Far too much, really, and not what she had. She frowned prettily over the problem. She knew Wither had followed her, but to her glee, saw that he had become obsessed with a silver haired elf woman. And that woman was even more closely guarded than the boys that Eithne desired so greatly.

Much to Eithne's surprise, she found Benjamin in the most unlikely of places: within the large flat seeing-stone that her pretty young lover watched often. But it was not Benjamin.

"He's just playing the part, Eithne, don't be stupid," Connor sneered, drinking his beer, "He doesn't have powers like that, and it's all fake. Just a play."

Just a play. But he played the role so well. Eithne considered once more.

Connor had been a lucky find. He knew Benjamin. He told her of his ways and habits, and she had no reason to suspect that Connor knew nothing at all of Benjamin. Connor was wild, amoral, exciting, just as the rich young men had been before the stock market crashed.

Eithne frowned pettishly. She was certain that her father or Gwyn had hand in that, just to force her to return to Fairy.

Benjamin hangs around the marketplace, Connor had told her, and she was beginning to suspect that this may not be so. She hadn't so much as glimpsed the young man in the several minutes she spent walking through the marketplace park.

Annoyed, she began to harass the people, shoving at children, tormenting young women, and even dumped over a stroller. Huffing, she tossed her head, pulling a cigarette from her purse to light, and then fit it into a long, rhinestone studded filter.

Eithne was not Jack's fire to put out, but that did not stop him from serving some of her medicine back to her. The wheel turned, after all, and that meant what comes around, goes around.

Jack did love the tropes and the cliches. They were so because they were true. He found her there, attracted by the feel of badly made doorways to Fairy, and watched.

With a coyote grin, Jack slipped in and out of reality until he was ahead of Eithne and jauntily stepping in her direction. A bump, a murmured 'so sorry' and he was off with her purse. Ribbons laughing in their silk and satin voices.

"Watch your step, you stupid great longshanks oaf!" Eithne shrilled after Jack, turning and becoming a petulant, spoiled brat in the flash of a touch. She abruptly threw several toys taken from the child's stroller after Jack, petty and pettish, before she turned with a flounce to pick up someone else's glass of wine. She drank that, pleased and preening with how well she'd told that lout off, until she realized...

Her Purse. Was. Gone.

Eithne flung the glass away and turned, brown eyes wide and furious, trying to pick out... ...She stopped herself, startled.

The thief couldn't have seen her. Shouldn't have. As if there was some wiser head than hers to give her advice that she soundly ignored, Eithne realized one of her own must be nearby.

Eithne spotted the tags and snaps of ribbons and went storming after them, shoving people and children aside alike, with no more care than if they were inanimate objects.

Jack's sleight of hand and her hubris gave him time to bull ahead. His dash was subtle. He was no bull and the marketplace was no china shop. He wove and in some places simply slipped into Faerie and back.

The train wreck girl had torn through the veil enough he could have taken the whole way through Faerie, but the object was to have her chase him. Away from the carousel and the crowd and into a dark alley where she would find him, perched on an iron -- that should give her pause -- fire escape ladder rifling through her purse.

Eithne scarce noticed where she was going, or that she was being led. She was vexed that she couldn't seem to catch up with him, and a few times, she made odd movements of her arms, as if she was trying to push away, drive off, someone pulling her aside and whispering wisdom to her.

Tossing her head, she confronted the thief, appalled as he went through her private things. Her cigarettes, her lighter, her lipstick and compact. A few expensive hankies, a pair of dainty gloves, a pair of lacy panties. A few golden coins struck with Gwyn's head on one side, Excaliber on the other.

Eithne stopped short and hard as she sensed the iron, but glared at Jack.

"That is MY purse, sirrah, you will return it directly!" she shrilled, pure, unadorned, spoiled brat.

She caught him examining the panties through a haze of smoke from one of her cigarettes. He grinned around the stick in his teeth when she made her demands and looked up from the lace. A newborn galaxy of stars blazed in the black velvet of his eyes.

"Prove it, luv."

"I scarce think that those will fit you," Eithne sneered as she sauntered closer, pausing to drag off of her cigarette. She blew smoke and smirked nastily at him. "Now give it back and I won't punish you too severely for stealing from me." Oh, oh, wasn't she the charitable soul?

Jack dropped the panties back into the purse and picked up one of the coins, deliberately ignoring her generous offer. He held the gold up to one starry eye. The other's gaze remained fixed on her. What a tricky Crow.

"Finders keepers. Losers weepers."

"And a hand off for a thief," she retorted, glancing to the coin of habit. She reached out for a rung of the ladder. A hiss, the scent of burning flesh, and then she yelped and jerked back, wide eyed, her mouth hanging open. Iron.

Angrily, she stumbled back, and looking around, quickly assessed her position. Abruptly, several rats had been recommissioned as snarling, slavering monsters with tentacles wiggling from their heads and limbs, jaws and eyes opening randomly in their filthy fur. Glamoured, each of them, they were no more than rats - but only another fae would know that.

"Bring me my purse, and his balls!" she ordered her horrors dramatically.

Jack dropped the coin into his front pocket as he eyed the fairy-godmother-on-acid rats. He saw through the glamour but made the appropriate frightened face - the wide eyes, the purse shield, the rictus grin, the cawing laughter.

"Oops." He blew smoke at the Halloween rats to shred away the glamour.

Smoke and shadow. The rats seemed quite happy to have the glamour broken - they scurried to hide behind Jack. The train wreck that was Eithne stared, her face ugly in its disbelieving shock and fury.

"You can't do that! You CAN NOT DO THAT! Those are MINE! YOU can't turn them back into Rats! YOU CAN'T! Do you hear me?!? You put them back! You give my purse back! DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?!"

It was a textbook perfect toddler's temper tantrum, complete with stomping feet, flailing arms and her face beet red and furious. Jack watched her stomp and yell and when she asked her final question, he answered with, "Eithne."

Like slapping her. Eithne stopped short, then with a few tosses of her head, started to preen and primp. She didn't have her pocket book and mirror! So from momentarily mollified to furious in a flash. She stamped a foot in lieu of powdering her nose, which was distinctly shiny.

"I am PRINCESS Eithne. Address me properly as is my just due. Now that you have my attention, you may return my purse."

"Hmm. You seem to be the type to use their real name. Is Eithne your true name? What would happen if I took these," he lifted the panties once more, "With your name. Would you be under my spell? I wonder."

"The royal type, and you should be asking yourself just how wise it would be to try and bind me to your filthy self," she retorted with a pout, as if she was thinking over the entire thrill factor of being captured by some ribbony man who was probably some nasty sort and there were heaving white bosoms and rope and spankings in there too. She caught her lower lip in pearly teeth and smirked.

"You cannot hope to place my under your spell," she insisted, thrusting out her chest. Observe the bubbly jubblies straining under satin. "I am no mere girl that you can order about!"

"No, not a mere girl. Still, rather boring," Jack sniffed at the panties before making a face. They disappeared back into her purse.

"Eithne." He left out the princess bit deliberately.

"..." Eithne stopped, and appeared to be thinking things through. He wasn't attacking. He wasn't taunting. He wasn't clasping her nubile body to his grimy manly self. This was not computing. She fell back onto habit.

"Nothing you do to me matters, when my family hears of your wickedness, they will destroy you. I am princess of Fae, and you -- you are a rogue skulking about through alleys, stealing from ladies!"

"I doubt your family would start a war over you. I figure they let you out here knowing you would get eaten. The problem of Eithne solved," Jack grinned, toothsome and ever so sly.

"That's what you think," she snapped, though the flick aside of her gaze would briefly betray her. They would. HE would. That bastard Gwyn. But he couldn't, not directly. Her parents would protest. He would be lambasted. He might take it, find it worth losing her.

Eithne tossed her head and once more weighed her options. The train wreck was still in progress. She shifted her stance, posing seductively and pouting prettily at Jack.

"Well. You wouldn't want to cause trouble for me, would you? I've done nothing to you, and I could give you any delight that you so desired." Purr purr purr, so sweet and dulcet, she might be giving cavities to the poor rats, "Now we've gotten off on the wrong foot, haven't we? You know my name, now what is yours?" Eithne held out her hand daintily for Jack to take. Thick mink lashes fluttered. Dimple pressed into her cheek. Perfect little moue of glossy lips. Girlish giggle.

Jack looked her up and down, as if he was interested, but she was not the Moon or his Solace.

"I wonder, darling, how you have lasted so long so blind. Can you not tell?"

Jack let his glamour slip for a terrifying moment. It was not scarecrow who perched on the iron rung, but the feathered King of Ghosts and Shadows. If she blinked, she might have missed it. "And you are in RhyDin. I think your 'family' has left you to the coyotes."

"I am not blind --" Petulance turned to a shriek as she saw through that glamour. Eithne flung herself back and crashed into empty boxes and trash cans alike, startling an old tomcat into peeling out over her chest and shoulders, leaving bleeding gouges.

"Now look at what you've done!" she wailed, pitching cans, bottles, whatever she could lay hands on at Jack. "Why should I care about Stupid --- " She went on to lambast several of her betters in entirely improper yet likely true manners, foul, crude, and cruel. It was a good thing Jack had led her away from all of those badly closed doorways, or she would be getting dragged to several courts to explain herself.

"Because you've been cast aside. You keep screaming things like that and well, nettles are the least you will have to worry about. There are monsters here, darling, that will find you quite tasty."

Jack licked his lips to imply he might find her delicious as well. There was the scent of Fae blood in the air. Thanks to the cat. Go figure.

"*I* Left," Eithne retorted, fighting her way out of the trash and pulling herself up with a proud tilt of her chin, "I was not cast aside, I cannot be cast aside! I am a GIFT. I am a GLORY. I am a JEWEL."

Eithne stabbed her forefinger of her right hand into the palm of her left as she made each point. It was true enough, in a way. She was like that ugly sweater Nana knitted for your Christmas gift. You could never give it away or otherwise repurpose it, because Nana had a sixth sense for those things and would demand to see you wearing it. None would never realize until after Nana's death that she was actually evil and took malicious glee in tormenting you with her ever uglier offerings.

Eithne tossed her head and smirked coyly, "And monsters do find me tasty and sweet and delicious, because I am a heady brew to the right man."

"Not all monsters are men."

"All men are just ...men. Even you rogish s..." Pause. He was not a roguish sort. He was playing at it. Pretending. There was something... something powerful. Powerful. Ding ding ding ding.

Everything in Eithne's demeanor changed. She turned a pristine and winsome little smile upon him, turned into the blushing virgin right before his eyes. Every bit of her body language echoed her act.

"But you. You are different. You can even fool my eyes, and I am no mere strayed princess looking for thrills and excitement in the lands of men. I have an important mission to accomplish, that would bring another layer of peace and prosperity to my realm. If only I could call upon your assistance, gracious king of kings... T'would be done in a trifling."

"Is it to torment mortals? Because if it is not, I doubt this mission's importance if it allows time to dally so."

Her transformation was skillful. Jack would give her credit for that, but the Crow was old. There were few tricks that he did not know.

Eithne giggled charmingly, and even her clothing was slowly, subtly, changing along with her demeanor, until she was garbed in a lovely snowy gown and pretty pink surcoat. It hinted at her lush curves and broadcasted her pure and virginal little heart. She abruptly had a fan in her hand that she used to flutter at her lips as she giggled.

"Tormenting mortals, why, no, they are all such plodding dears, it does them good to find mysteries and wonders tagging at their mundane doings. It brings them something new to think upon. But truly, I was seeking among them for a lost lordling of our kind. I must find him, for he has been promised to the Oak, and she has been ever so broken hearted that he strayed away."

"This is RhyDin, darling. There are no plodding dears here. Everyone knows Mystery exists. Now, stop trying to dye your story in bright colors," Jack smirked, tapping his fingers against her purse.

"What do you mean, there are no plodding dears here?" she warbled like she swallowed a pack of butterflies. "Why, look at them. They're humans just like on earth. I'm sure some more may be adept in some way, but they're just pathetic little creatures who can see only one color of the rainbow. Why else would you be here?"

"I am looking for you," Jack grinned while holding the purse between his hands and leaning forward, arms on knees, "Eithne."

He said her name a third time. Oh dear.

"...What?" she asked, unease fumbling through her cheery smile and lovely little lady act. She fluttered the fan at her chin and eyed him. "Looking for me? Why, I am just a little princess on a little mission, but I would welcome your august assistance, and I would cherish every word of instruction that you might bestow upon me."

One swish of her fan and Jack was right there. In her space, his grin wide and his eyes starry. He pressed the purse against her stomach.

"I do not care about you or where you come from or to whom you bend the knee. Come near or touch one of mine and there will be hell to pay, princess."

"..." Green eyes were wide and round, and lurking in their dark fringes were dark things. Remnants of her heritage, perhaps. Yet they were driven back as surely as she. Her mouth hung open, her skin even more pale.

Greenish. Yes. Greenish and ghastly. She grabbed her purse in fingers like claws, and with a yip, fled away as fast as she could go. Vanishing into one of the rifts she had cut, and sealing it poorly behind her.

His pride had been in seeing his son take his first steps... In watching him master the bicycle, seeing him forge ahead in his education, even in facing down his own father to decide what their relationship would be.

He had watched the boy excel in everything he put his hand and heart to.

And now, he was excited and proud because his son, his beautiful and active child...

Moved his hand.

Lirenel exhaled, curling his arm to stroke Benjamin's hair, then gently pressed a kiss to the young man's slightly sweat-damp brow. Would Benjamin even understand the intricate cut of those emotions? He often said he did, and just as often proved it, but in the end, Benjamin was just a youth without children of his own.

Where have you gone, Brandon? Lirenel asked himself, asked the darkness, a question that grew weary of itself. It almost had lost its meaning.

Where had he gone?

His body remained, deep in a coma, watched over by the finest nurses and doctors available, the most advanced machines recorded his bodily functions and brain waves...

But it could not tell him where his son had gone.

Lirenel exhaled softly, letting that wave of pain wash over him before turning his gaze back to Benjamin as he slumbered. Such a beautiful creature, powerful, warm, and so young and untried.

If he lost Benjamin too...

It was too difficult to consider. Yet Lirenel's golden gaze lit upon the folder that Benjamin had taken to studying. It was a journal, a collection of holy writings and rites, the sum of Benjamin's paternal grandparents faith in their pagan religion.

Benjamin had spoken to him of a wanderer, which had given the elf a nasty turn until he realized that Benjamin was speaking of Cernunnos. Benjamin wanted to learn of his father's religious ways, as they'd grown up mainly with his mother's beliefs around them.

For some reason, that was somewhat alarming to Lirenel. Something about it felt wrong... Artificial. Something that Benjamin hadn't decided on his own. Not even something Benjamin pursued just to try and understand Jack.

Lirenel was certain that Benjamin's grandparents were as honorable and loving as Benjamin, but ?

Perhaps it was his dark thoughts of Brandon, of his daughter, his family... Of loss. He slipped from the bed and picked up the folder. Glancing back to Benjamin with a touch of smile, Lirenel quietly paced from the bedroom. He paused to pick Nyx up from her cradle, and holding her, sat in the rocker to read.

---

Somewhere distant, Luck swore a blue streak and threw his cards to the table angrily.

"You never learn," Fortune chided with a snarky grin, "Stand pat when you've got seventeen or you're boned."

She looked like hell. No more or less. Lexius observed this happenstance with a distant, scholarly curiosity. Hers was a keen agenda to never show the color of her blood, and yet, there it was. Bright red and scented silver rather than copper. Viscid and aggressive. Startling against pale white skin.

It was mixed in mud, mold, filth. She was a wreck. Dripping a trail of muck as she strode through the Red Dragon Inn. He watched her, dispassionate, yet wondering what on earth could have managed to dragged the timelord through such a swamp.

Swamp. Wither.

Pharlen grin harsh and cold, thrusting a simple and clear crystal out to Lexius. He eyed it cautiously. She knew him well enough to know where there were chinks and rifts in his being and bearing.

"A sun stone," she explained in a harsh twist of voice, "It will guide you."

"In return for...?" Lexius demanded, because there was always a catch. He watched Pharlen's manic pink eyes coolly. They were hard, shattered, and slowly, they ticked away the sharp edges until there was a wryly amused smile.

"I am sorry."

Lexius was silent. Astonished, perhaps. Wondering just how badly hurt the woman was to simply and clearly offer apologies for her own peculiar brand of manipulations. Would he had helped her out of simple curiosity? Likely. She didn't take that chance. She set the chips to fall where they would come up in her favor.

Nodding faintly, he reached to accept the spar crystal, accepting the apology and stone alike.

"What does it do?"

"I can't tell you. You will find its direction," Pharlen responded, "Crystal Calcite, but it is Icelandic Spar and Sunstone which will show you."

Cryptic, but at least this time, Pharlen let it be known she would be. Lexius nodded, quirking a brow. He was soon to visit the RhyDin library, after all.

"What happened?" Lexius asked, frowning faintly. Pharlen smirked, cool acid.

"Wither wasn't home," she replied, "And I am not sure where he's at."

She turned away and rather than to open one of the dimensional doors she had scattered through the inn, she fell into a splashing heap. The scent of ancient brine and the sage swept Mojave lingered long after the woman vanished.

The desert spawned such strange creatures with such strange strategies for survival.

Mother Moon's Sanitary Turkish Baths and Plunge was dark, dank. Decaying. The RhyDin moons shone down upon it reluctantly, and where it fell, it shimmered. Glimmering fungus and algae could be seen within the wreckage.


The doorway was collapsed, but beside it, part of the wall was down. Over the lower stones, black mould painted, the way mud might mark the passage of feet. An intense foreboding was over the entire lot, a powerful and subtle spell meant to drive away anyone unwelcome. But it was only that. There was no watchdog spell cast. An oversight, perhaps, or perhaps, one simply wasn't needed.

Lexius paused just at the very perimeter of the place, just at the boundary of the spell he could almost taste. The beads shivered at his side, seemed to strain forward, but the Elf held them back with a slow pass of hand along their knobby length before his fingers plucked a small pouch from the side of his belt. He worked open the ties and sent his thoughts racing out, then he stepped forward, into the decay, scattering grains of sand from the pouch before him like rose petals.

Quickly, Lexius found that there was much more there than met the eye. Trapped souls, human, mostly. Large wilding things, primitive fae, a few of them, and some seeming ill at ease. Other beings who were finding themselves quite at home.

As for the new Master of the heap, it was difficult to pinpoint such a being in a haven made for itself, but there were those flickers of malevolent intelligence that spoke of Wither. Its attention was not directly upon its home.

Fresh from a trip to the Planes, Lexius easily identified those souls. Here when they should be there. Trapped, willingly or no, they didn't belong in this place any more than the creature that held them caged.

But the Elf did not try to set anything free. He simply walked through the mess of it, following the flicker-flash of a scent, a feeling, a taste he'd become quite familiar with in the past few weeks. He didn't want Wither's attention back here just yet.

The beads remained silent, co-conspirators in his bold, but not too brazen intrusion into this domain. More sand was scattered, though what he'd dropped behind him seemed to following faithfully at his heels like a well trained mutt. Once there was enough of that to cushion him from the rot, he traded one pouch for another to draw forth that perfectly exquisite crystal that Pharlen had given him before her most recent encounter with the Fae.

There was no interruption to the night noises there. The creak of frogs and crickets, random watery noises, gasses escaping to the surface through oil and algae alike. As he moved, as his sands moved, a few of the watery denizens moved away, not caring for any touch of desert.

Yet, that crystal ? Lexius could see reflected through it a dot of light heading cleanly through the dark ruins. A primitive guide stone. The crystal did not stir up the interest or greed of any of the creatures around him. It was clean and pure, and despite being perfectly shiny, it was purified and they could not sense it.

Lexius let it float before him, pointing the way with the view that showed him that beam of light, and had another crystal in his fingers by then. One of his own creation, smeared deep inside the body with the traces of the fungus Wither had once left upon the porch and tuned to the frequency of his home plane.

The crystal was meant to, at the very least, trap Wither like a genie in a bottle. If it worked. Cradling that second crystal in the shield of his palm, the shrouding of his thoughts, he kept on the path of the line with the sand slithering around his boots.

Silent and shrouded, Lexius made his way through the morass, the crystal pointing the way nicely. The sand held him over the waters -- in places, the old pools were still there, and some opened to the springs below them, making them deep and dark. Other places were dirt covered, thick with fungus living off of decay, and slick if stepped upon without protection.

Soon, Lexius could see a nebulous faery light of palest blue almost illuminating a large chamber. He stepped into it carefully, eyes narrowed, senses alert to everything. A few corpses floated in the water, most nearly skeletal. An alarmingly large frog floated belly up, half devoured by something with an uneven tooth pattern.

The wet was only a minor inconvenience, though Lexius did lose some of the sand to its greedy, perverted hold. When he needed to, the Elf bent his Will just so, subtle and swift and applied only to himself, allowing him drift just above then beyond its touch.

With his destination in sight, Lexius let the crystal pointing the way float right back down to a side where it hovered like a guardian, on call and ready. Then he strode into the blue glow of the fae, gaze cast beyond the frog and the bodies littering the pool.

The very moment he spotted Wither himself, that easy stride would become the blink of a teleport, taking him the last few feet with the element of surprise on his side

A blink. And beside Wither -- who was so intent upon its own meditations, it didn't notice Lexius until the man was beside it.

The creatures inhabiting the chamber scattered at Lexius's abrupt arrival, squalling, turning the darkness into a cacophony with the echoing walls. From the waters, roiling forth in a froth of fury, a behemoth nucklavee. A hideous, skinless centaur-like water beast, raging as it came to its masters aid. Though, Wither did not move. It remained utterly still, caught within its meditation, though all around it, madness began to rage.

The drawback of the crystal trap that Lexius held was that he would have to touch it to Wither directly. He did just that, slapping the palm that held that crystal directly against Wither's chest and holding it there.

Neath those shabby and ragged robes, did one even want to think what was beneath them? Bony ribs laced in algae and slime, the glairy and goo Wither was so enamored of. Lexius's hand and the crystal passed into those slimy spaces. A rictus grin stretched over Wither's face at the touch of the crystal.

Madness filled the chamber, the whirling waters working into glowing froth, and the guardian roaring, flailing out with an oak cudgel wildly as it staggered and stumbled through the confusion. The wakening maelstrom set other forces loose, stinging presences lashing like lightning, trying to escape, others attacking the living, some simply and mindlessly attacking.

Lexius swept his free hand out and the beads gave a thunderclap of sound as some of the sand beneath the elf's boots, what hadn't already been drowned in the retched water, whipped up in a storm of motion to scourge Wither's guardians.

The Elf left that crystal in there to do what it would do. Really, he had no choice in the matter as all hell broke loose around him. He could split his thoughts in several directions at once. He could even enact multiple things to happen all at the same time. But he was still just a single Elf amid a frothing sea of deathly chaos.

He caught the beads in the hand he'd dipped down into Wither's chest and they burned with a holy light unsuitable to this place as they wrapped around his skin to burn the filth from his flesh. That cost him, though, and the thrashing cudgel caught him square in the side and sent him sailing across the room into the heart of all that restless action.

But the wind rose around him even as he slide through the slime and the muck on the floor. Arid and hot, it swept out from the place he landed in a swirling swirling vortex of motion to clear a space for him to stand. Lexius staggered and snatched the crystal back from Wither as the being began to suck into the specially crafted prison.

A crystal full of nastiness, it glimmered darkly in the elf's grasp. It painted the seeming of Wither over Lexius's form, and thus, the nucklavee stopped its wild attacks.

When the desert heat arose around Lexius, the beast was ever more confused, but still believed that its master stood where Lexius did. Finally, roaring, it slid back into the hissing waters before it was dessicated. A crack in the roof shivered through, and dropped old timber and roofing tiles into the waters, and allowed the light of the moon above to shine down and within.

A cat, of all things -- the cat that had led Jackie earlier -- hopped down from that moon beam and quickly trotted to Lexius. No meow, just a yellow eyed gaze that said "follow me, you fool".

Well then! The crystal had done its job well, indeed. Lexius was picking himself up off the floor, half curled to the side for the singing of his ribs, and was already mentally picking up broken pieces of marble and stone that lay scattered around the room... when it proved an unnecessary task. The creature plunged back into that black, slimy water leaving the elf facing... a cat.

A cat. Jackie had been chasing a cat. The Elf's eyes narrowed, already shadowed with pain, but he stepped after the feline still alert for any other dangers.

The cat led him true, and quickly. It took the path Lexius had made and reinforced it, kept back any further bogies and falling masonry. It looked back often, seeming to realize that Lexius was pained, but pain was life and falling from that slim path was death.

The animal leapt lightly from the building into open air, then turned, sitting pretty, tail wrapped around its feet and twitching now and then. Watching the elf keenly. The bathhouse did not collapse in their wake, rather, it seemed to heave itself into the same state it had been in before Lexius ventured into the ruins. The same sense of foreboding returned.

Lexius had more sand. Lexius always had more sand. And he used it ? because this was a damn cat come from nowhere! The beads still snug around his arm, he followed in the feline's paw prints without delay and despite the pain. Yes, pain simply was and he was well acquainted with it.

Once outside, Lexius pulled a strip of muslin from his neck and wrapped it around the black crystal once they were clear of the bath house. But the sense of it lingered and that had him studying the place anew. Without losing sight of the cat!

"Are they tied into this place so deeply then?" Lexius asked, wondering if he would be talking to himself. No, no. He was asking the cat. Hey, it might answer!

"Yes," the cat DID answer. In a tart tenor, at that, "Tis marked and half sunken into the realm where thine captive t'were bred, Sandman. Heal thineself, can thee? Or shall it be that I must lick over thine hurts and find thee sandpaper to the sandpaper of mine tongue?"

"I can." That troubled note in his voice was not for himself. The beads were the bandage to a potential wound to the spirit that the desert would cleanse once he'd returned to it and sunk himself into the sands. The body would follow accordingly. But he had time, still. A little longer. His gaze swung back around to the cat and (of course!) he probed a thought in its direction.

"You involve the children." Lexius didn't believe in that kind of coincidence. Of course, he didn't sound displeased about the fact. More curious. Hey, they weren't his kids!

It was purely and simply a cait sith to Lexius's probing, without any particular nobility, though clearly, with alliance. Who to, that was the question. But for now, it was a helpful creature, and not lashing out with cudgels.

It tipped an ear, an feline version of a shrug. They weren't his kits, either.

"One takes what advantage one may, Sandman. Those are children of the Second Race, they are not simple children. Human children are pretty things, yet always they are bound to return when taken to the faery host. Delightful until there is some maiden or lad desiring to take them from the lands of shadow. And always, there is," The cat rambled a moment, as cats will, and flicked its tail. "Ah, now I see. Do you?" Answered, or not, it continued. "And dost not thee do as much? Involve the youngsters?"

Lexius knew little enough of the breed. Enough to tentatively identify it. Enough to know a tale or two of the folklore. He had been researching these few weeks, after all. But he didn't seem to fear for his soul. And this one had a definite agenda.

"Not yet." Lexius admitted. Human children always bound to return, but not these? He wasn't quite certain how it fit.

"Who sides with the Second Race then?" Yes, he would ask boldly after its affiliation and show no more remorse for his own actions. "Given their heritage and their parents, childhood is a luxury."

"A human child must be returned, but who knows what of these Second Race children? Mayhaps they would remain ever as pretty children in the courts of shade and light," the cat remarked, preening a paw. His ears quirked and danced.

"Dost thee not know? Few, few are those Second Race remaining. They allie with the Powers That Be. That is the forces of entropy, enthalpy and harmony. But. Those have no bite within the faery worlds. And a shame it is, a shame. For they change not. They have but few agents of change within them, and those they fear, they shun, they hate."

Paw nicely cleaned, the cat fanned out 'fingers' then set its foot down once more. Tail twitch.

"Tis luxury, but know thee: they are children for many, many long years. Thirty and some, or more, the giggling lass is."

The Elf's brow furrowed just a bit as he absorbed what the cat had to say, pulling his thoughts back from where they touched the normal seeming feline.

"I will consult with their mother," Lexius finally decided. This would all, no doubt, make much more sense to her. It was a puzzle he worked in his mind, though, twisting and turning it about.

Lexius looked once more to the bathhouse, but made no effort to change anything he saw. Instead, he spoke to the cat again.

"My thanks." Just that. But it was much when he rarely offered any at all. "I believe the desert will suit my visitor for a time."

And with that, Lexius was wrapping himself up in the twist of his own though to bury himself and that crystal somewhere deep in the dune. Wither would love it!

Wither was going to slime the ever loving sand off of Lexius the moment he had half a chance! The cat accepted the thanks as a cat will - as its just due, and stood to stretch into a Hallowe'en cat pose briefly.

"Beware, Sandman. Be Aware." Just that before it turned and trotted off to do important cat business.

(Taken from live play with the amazing Lexius <3)

What had been fog and mists bourn of magical means, brought and wrought by the skilled hands of the caster became stale cigar smoke and cigarette haze. A small, dingy room surrounded by a treachery of tables, each topped with strange and crude dioramas.

For a moment, the gold lit gaze lingered upon a Vans shoe box containing a charmingly primitive display of a battered Luke Skywalker action figure lain on a grass of old Astroturf within a glade of dried juniper. Awkwardly knelt beside him was a brown haired Dawn doll, equally battered. An antique tin soldier in Cossack clothing and a bendy Jack Skellington watched over the pair.

Interesting. It reminded him of a legend.

He wondered how long he had been standing in that odd room, watching the eternity of a hand of Dominoes when abruptly, the Game changed. A deck of Uno cards replaced the bones.

"What's he want, anyhow?" Luck inquired, shuffling the deck.

"To join the Game," Audacity smirked, "But there's rules, gold knight. Rules."

"A knight should know for rules," Entropy grunted, eyeing the man keenly. She leaned back to rifle into her purse, bringing out a compact and lipstick.

"Shows what you know," Fortune snorted, "There's rules."

"Tell us the rules, Golden Boy," Chance demanded, shuffling the Uno deck back and forth between its hands.

"No sweaty boob money," Lirenel responded with a snarl of a grin.

"We don't cheat, we don't lie, we don't tell," Luck smirked, "You enter our Game, Or Not, and everything that you gain you keep to yourself until it is done."

"It's why Cassandra hated playing with us so much. She cheated, and no one listened until it was done," Chance added, watching the man.

"Or Not?" Lirenel queried, careful as he stepped closer. Another diorama caught his eye. Housed in a larger box once carrying Huggies toddler size, an old twelve inch GI Joe sat on a throne of twisted roots, naked, twigs taped to its head, a cheap brass ring around its neck. A vapidly smiling gothic Bratz doll lay decapitated at its feet. A menagerie of plastic animals surrounded the dolls, the box papered in magazine pictures of deep forests.

"You can Play, or you can clean up the room. We don't care," Audacity replied.

"But not leave," Lirenel prompted.

"Not until it is done," Luck nodded, cracking a beer open. Lirenel nodded slowly, watching the troupe. Three often played together, he could tell, but Audacity seemed new to the table. There was no sign of Fate. He wondered where she may be. Instead, there was Entropy, whose beauty was a distant thing, she decayed every moment.

"And none of you are curious why or how I am here," he prompted.

"We know why and how. It's our game. Our rules," Chance smiled, thin and cool, "Are you in, or are you out?"

"Then I am in. I'm not your maid," Lirenel responded graciously, inclining his head. He held out his hand to reach for a chair and found the deck of Uno cards in it. He realized he was already seated at the table, already had a lit Cuban, already had an open bottle of Hangar 18 Orange Wheat.

"Oh, isn't he classy?" Entropy sneered over her Old Milwaukee.

"Isn't he just?" Audacity grinned, for a moment, looking all too much like Jack to Lirenel's eyes. He didn't allow himself to hesitate, though his mind rolled quickly with that information while he re-shuffled the cards, began to deal them out.

Each game reflected each effort they made within the reality of humans, Lirenel decided, each hand was win or lose or draw. Events that moved forward, or back, or not at all. He held the Uno cards in his hands, and wondered if he, too, could affect the events with the games.

Lirenel moved his feet slowly back under his chair, away from Entropy's as her sweaty and bare foot sought to pull at his boots. He could hear Luck give a scornful snort, saw the annoyance flicking in Audacity's gaze. Chance was unmoved, though likely as aware as the others at Entropy's attempt.

Fate was absent from the Game, replaced by Audacity. That was somehow important. Entropy had pushed into the Game and now, Lirenel.

His brows knit faintly. Enthalpy.


(Posted for luscious Lirenel <3)

"He is Second Race, take him! He is more than a replacement for the little half-breed!" Eithne snarled, furious, as she was confronted by the Daughter of Oak. They stood upon a sacred hilltop, under a steely sky, surrounded by the wooden posts crowning the summit. Between them, lain like a sacrifice to forgotten gods, a child. Desdenova, clad in primitive linen and hides. Unconscious and inert. His scent fell dead within feet of him.

Tall, elegant, a rattan work of a female figure, the Daughter made a sharp and dismissive gesture. He was dangerous. He did not sleep where Time did not flow ? he awoke, he struggled, he called out for help. He was fragile. He was powerful.

And the very coursers of Hel sought for him.

Eithne stared flatly at the Daughter. This boy was her only bargaining chip. If the Daughters did not accept him, they would rally, they would protest, they would fight and win once they saw that she had taken Benjamin for her own.

The Daughter scoffed at Eithne, a handful of thorn and tough leaves lashed across the fae woman's cheek, leaving a screeching horror of torn flesh, decay, and parasites. Eithne howled as she clawed at her face, falling to her knees.

The child is not yours to bargain with to be begin with, what fools do you believe we be? The Sister demanded in the booming of thunder.

"What fool dost thou believe I be, pollarded fool, servant to humans, slave to their mastery and will?!" Eithne snarled, the dainty pink and white of her delicate hand curling and curving into a vile scythe of tarry black. With that bizarre appendage, she slashed the damaged profile away from bone, and from the gouts of bright red blood and sullen orange ichor, her face emerged anew, perfect and pretty.

Have care, your mask falls away easily. And now we know, The Daughter sneered. Eithne paused, eyes narrowing. How she wanted to twist the tangle of vine and leaf serving as a head from the Daughter's woody neck. Yet, in this place, she did not dare.

In the realms of Nature, only Nature stood inviolate. All others were subject to Her laws.

Eithne smiled, sweetness and light, as she reached down to grab Desdenova by his arm. As she lifted him, she left image of sweet faced Conner in his wake. Singing and crooning, doing his level best to get laid.

The Daughter regarded the image, unimpressed.

Less he is than a day lily in a glass. His beauty fades even now, his voice is of little merit, his song is trite and dry.

Though it was true, Eithne huffed in annoyance. But she supposed it couldn't be that easy. Tossing her head, she turned, vanishing with Desdenova into a rip in the reality.

The Daughter patiently closed that rift, then sealed it. There would be no more bargaining with Eithne.

It should have kept a quicker eye on that dessicated bastard. That hellish stretch of sand in a man's form. That cool, calm demeanor that all too often held a celestial humor within the mismatch of his eyes, an amusement so distant, so alien, that it could no longer be made of a mortal's form.

It had become greedy. Greedy and rash. Ired upon finding its domain within the old bathhouse had been violated. Irritated with watching after Eithne's foolish conquests and doings. It sought Solace... And found it in the twinkling eyes of Pretty-Pretty-Pretty.

Such words she spoke. They flittered away like tossed shards of mylar, they wove and spun and It tended only to the rhythms of them. She was a strange little droplet of water, a peculiar little darling. Her beauty lured it closer and closer.

It hadn't noticed the serene and evil smile of the male elf until it was far too late. He had no right, It had every right. Pretty-Pretty-Pretty outright spoke that she must be for it. She must be. She had been dead, encased in the loving clay of earth, the first blooming of slime signaling her surrender into its arms.

She belonged to Wither. She belonged...

Summer burned around it. Wither howled as it was entrapped within some foul magic that the elf had crafted of the very heart of the dry and hot desert. Its mold, its rot, its glairy and goo, wicked away in an instant. Leaving it dry as a husk and twice as furious.

What was worse, it could hear the elf snickering now and then. Hear the cursed beads giggling and taunting.

When it finally found itself free of the entrapment, it fled at once back to its realm, and sulked. Restored itself upon the boundless swamps, drank the filthy waters, the tainted essences of all that had passed through the land.

Free once more, and having scarce learnt its lesson. It was an ancient thing, it knew little of emotion and property and possessions; that which seemed to be its own, must be its own.

Wither hissed and sulked. It didn't question why it had been freed. It simply did not care, that was not a part of its mind set. It never feared it would be eternally entrapped any more than it expected to be set loose.

There was some distant scolding from the young king. Pretty-Pretty-Pretty was not for Wither, she belonged to the Winter. Wither sneered at the whimpering nonsense. The Winter King was ancient and powerful, but Wither was just the same. These kings and queens wielding their silly little emblems of power were as meaningless as the prating of infants and less promising.

Even as it wallowed in the malfeasance of its desires, it could see her. See his Pretty-Pretty-Pretty. Dressed in luscious leathers that worshipped her curves. Creeping along a darkened hallway, the brilliance of her hair muted and braided, the intensity of her gaze spared for survival rather than passion.

It reached for her, it lusted, it desired, and those emotions bled around it thick and heady. It did not care what the young king said. What the old king ordered. It was older. It would have its prize.

Withers snarling and ire halted just as it did. Stopped short. The empty eye sockets glinted and flickered. It was forced to turn from its vision of its obsession. Turned slowly, deliberately, and faced its own lands. Its swamps and mires, the glorious wastes of peat and bog studded with the strangled remains of humans so long ago struggling for the favour of any god.

Primeval, primordial, it was vast, inviolate in its own way as the Desert. Yet.

Filthy and bellowing marshy gasses into the air, a chunk of Wither's land had cracked away. The water of the marsh poured downwards into nothing. A vast void. The land was breaking apart.

Horrified, Wither flickered into the air, floating like a scarecrow blown from its stake. Arms wide, it darted and swooped, trailing the shabby and rotting burlap cloak. At the very edges, the eldest of places, the most primitive. Where creatures like itself, long forgotten in the minds and hearts of humans, conducted their peaceful lives.

A dog bayed. Wither turned to face it and found itself enwrapped within the Hunt.

The wild hunt ran riot upon the very edges of the Fairy lands, where the Land touched the Sky, where the Sea spread wide. Everywhere, everywhere they looked, that they sought, fractures had begun.

In the realms between Fairy and those of Nature, the Land had fallen away, drifted off like icebergs of green life in a drowning sea of Void.

"This cannot be," Wither insisted. Within the raging maelstrom of the Hunt, it found itself facing the ancient and terrible beauty of the Eldest, the Hunter Mallt. She stood, still as ice, colder, unmelting.

"And yet, it is."

"It cannot be!" Wither yelled, stricken by a terror it had never known. Not even when it had known what pain the human mage could grant it, not even when it experienced the pain the desert elf heaped upon it, it knew no terror.

It had not known fear at all from well before it had withered.

"Cease thine scrabblings for what ye may not have -- find me a diety, fresh and new, unsullied by the gossip, the whispers, the politics of this place or any. Go now. For both we are Summoned."

Wither lowered its head before the command of the archetype, though it puzzled over her last words.

Both we? Wither was not summoned; in fact, Mallt was charging it to a difficult task. Yet, an instant later, it understood. Mallt and a brace of her favorite dogs vanished from the whirling madness of the Hunt.

Somewhere else, Pretty-Pretty-Pretty was snatched out of her larcenous jaunt. Snatched out of Withers reach. Now it had nothing else to do but to do as it was ordered. Grinding teeth filthy and broken, it barked a hoarse order to the Hunt, and led it from the crumbling outlands.