Áthas stood before the rest of the assembled Unseelie, his eyes shining with a green fire that made you think of sickness of agony.
“Oh Queen of the Unseelie, I beg you tell us that which is your plan so that we may make the world one of magic and wonder again. Make the land as we see fit and to walk in the Dream World as it were the Living World with no fear of harm from these disasters of the flesh that the Goddess cursed the land with.”
He bowed his head low after he spoke, knowing he had asked what everyone in the room wanted, no needed, to know. He knew that the Queen was capable of wiping life from the world, he had seen her do a smaller version of it before with the Wild Hunt. However, there is not treachery in all of them, not all of them are oath-breakers that need to be shattered upon the monsters of the Darkness.
Siobhan raised her head to look upon Áthas. Her smile was genuine, even with the open malice she still showed from her last words. She held Tsíoraíocht high in the air and spoke low, her voice dark and wispy like the snakes moving through the autumnal leaves.
“Long ago, before man was truly developed, I was walking upon the banks of a river no longer of this world and I saw this wonderful spear. I sat there for three days, making sure I was not a thief to take it, and when three moons had passed, I picked it up and felt such power as I had never felt before.”
She slid from the dais, her first steps in so very long. Every one of the assembled felt tears in the heart from the beauty of such a thing. Her guards walked two steps ahead of her, time perfectly with her steps, her turns were theirs, her pauses were theirs.
“It burnt my hand at first.” She raised the hand and kissed the barest line of a scar in her perfect alabaster skin. “I did not let go of it however, I knew that there was a greatness in it and I would not be denied.” Tsíoraíocht glowed now, crimson hues lit the room in a macabre chandelier as the Queen walked through the crowd. Her hands brushing the faces of each one. She sent a little jolt of herself into them, a little jolt of Tsíoraíocht into them.
“Like the weapons lost during the first wars, this was made at the beginning of time for Gods to wield against another and, like so many of us..” her face dropped into nearly palatable anguish, “…it was left upon the battlefield and left to exist in this place without the touch of power that had forged it.”
Her steps were softer now, her gown not touching the floor although she walked upon it. She made the round after round of the room until each and every creature of the Unseelie had felt her touch, thousands and thousands of them. With words like those that raised the Tsíoraíocht, each of them began to glow from within. No pain, no duplicity, just raw power.
The Redcap felt the blood gush from the top of their heads, pouring down in a waterfall that never hit the ground. Their strength multiplied by unknown quantities. The individual Sidhe felt their hands of power erupt into life, hurting no one, just raw power. Blood and knives, poison and destruction were chaotically all about the room. Then there was the Queen.
After the last kiss to the last of the smallest of the demi-fey, her lips parted into a smile and she closed her eyes and Tsíoraíocht grew smaller and smaller in her hand, a sword, then a knife, then not even a needle. She clapped her hands together with a thundering echo and her eyes were a pure blackness, not a color, a void where color should have been, a darkness that had no end, no beginning.
She walked back to the dais, the cracks shrinking more and more until they were nothing but a memory. She stood in front of her throne with her voids for eyes, the Darkling Throng glowed the color of blood before her and she threw her head back and laughed, the power of it hitting them all in the chest like waves.
“We begin our return this very moment. Go, all of you. Do not cause mischief or a little mayhem as their stories tell them we do. Do not let them think we are content with anything but a playful, if harmful laugh. No, tonight you will go from this place and slowly you will take them, all of them, and make sure they are gone from this world. Not dead, the dead have power. No, gone from this place, this world, from anywhere. I have given you this power and from this moment on, the Unseelie will take back the world from the light. We will show them the beauty of the darkness before they are forever gone from a place they have spoiled.”
Her wrists moved slowly and her blades flicked to them, the sounds of billions of wings filled the room and the Void disappeared from her eyes, a sober honesty entering her voice.
“Some of you will die, they have tools that can hurt us as you very well know and even the darkest of us is not a God, not anymore. So I send you all out yes, but do not think I will stay here and linger about as my beautiful people do my work. No, no not at all. I come with you and we will bathe in the darkness together.”
Her words did not end in the thunderous voice of a God, but in the Honest voice of their Queen and their roar was ten thousand fold in approval.
“Let us begin.”
The sun leapt over the mountains as it always did, dark disappearing in an instant to be filled with the blazing light of a merciless sun. The temperature in Death Valley would near the record today if the forecast was right, and when you lived in a desert, it was almost always right. Earth was cracked open and begging for any semblance of water, even the merest drop.
The earthquake started off with the low rumble they all did, the world rolling in subtle waves that tumbled rocks and the few houses that dared to be out in this furnace of an angry god. However, after a few seconds, all form of regular stopped. The earth stopped moving at all and the rumble grew deeper and deeper like a scream at a baritone range. With no warning or pattern the ground exploded into hills twenty t fifty feet tall. Over and over again the land lurched upward as it was wrenched from its natural shape. The sides of cliffs collapsed and hundreds of tons buried the small houses and shops here in the now aptly name valley.
Miles away, Talamh stood on a small plain and screamed laughter as the brown and black light shot from his fingers into the Earth, the land obeying his every inclination and reshaping it as he saw fit for it to be shaped. Even before he had not had power such as this. He had dreamed of such things, but never this. As the thought crested his mind he poured all of his new-found power into the ground and the mountains themselves answered his call and crashed downward in a hellish slide of rocks and death.
Thousands of miles to the east, on a cloudy beach on an island man had stepped on but twice, a small waif of a girl stood with a smile and moved her fingers with piano key motions and at her movements the clouds above got darker and darker, the wind blew harder and harder. She did not move, she did not blink, she laughed and giggled with childlike mirth as the sun vanished from view and the clouds raced towards her an unimaginable speeds.
Gaoth was such a slight thing, maybe knee-high to a Sidhe, but the terror in her laughter would make all of them flee as they saw the things heading towards her so fast that it was dizzying to look upon. Clouds came and went in an instant and more and more built behind them, dozens of miles tall. Black clouds with no lightning, no rain, just the darkening of the world for those that had dared steal from their betters.
She closed her hands into fists and the wind stopped completely, the clouds waiting at the shore, waiting for their Mistress to give them another command. Within their mass no light penetrated, no happiness could exist, no life would survive.
Siobhan's Return 