Issue #95 – Into The Woods (FaerieQuest Part 2)

The Descendants Vol 8: The Weaver's Web

• Issue #85 – The Ballad of Bad Lass
• Issue #86 – Those Not Forgotten
• Issue #87 – Descendants… In Space
• Issue #88 – Tome of Battle
• Issue #89 – All That Glitters
• Issue #90 – Just Us Sidekicks
• Issue #91 – Rock and Roll Lifestyle
• Descendants Special #8 – The Heart of Rock ‘N Roll
• Issue #92 – Homage
• Issue #93 – Day of Recovery
• Issue #94 – The Knight, The Witch and the Gadgeteer (FaerieQuest Part 1)
• Issue #95 – Into The Woods (FaerieQuest Part 2)

Into The Woods (Part 2)

“I’m not so sure about taking my armor off at all while we’re here,” Warrick complained, keeping a wary eye on the daoine hunters who were busy attacking the branches of the fallen trees to built a proper litter for him. “I’m not even sure we should trust these guys seeing as the evil cat is our translator. As far as we know, he might have sold us into slavery or something.”

Tink nodded, having been thinking along those lines herself. “True, but it’ll be safer for you to be carried on the litter instead of sling over my shoulder. We don’t know if your rib is broken or not, and if you get jostled too much…” She gestured with her fists clenched around a pair of burning splints. According to Gabraed, what she’d assumed to be incense was a mixture whose smoke most local plant life avoided.

Without a counter argument for that, Warrick grunted his dismay once and then his armor melted from his body, leaving him wearing only the padded black athletic garb and face mask he kept just in case he needed to go without his armor. The aluminum and iron he normally used for his personal armor pooled on the ground around him. The moment the girding support of the armor was gone, he hissed in pain and tried to curl his body way from the injury.

Kneeling beside him, Tink gently lay her hand on his covered cheek. “It’s okay. We’ll make sure they do something for you as soon as possible. Do you have any painkillers in your belt?”

“I kinda doubt the aspirin I’m packing is strong enough.”

“Better for you than the topical creams that are all I thought to keep with me.” Careful not to move him too much, Tink started checking through the First Aid pouch on his belt, rummaging through eppipens, bandages, antibiotic spray, and other such kit before retrieving a packet of pills.

The sound of hooves on ash caught their attention while Tink was taking a bottle of water out of a pocket in her kilt. The daoine man Gabraed called the Huntmaster had ridden up and was staring down at them. Not specifically at them, after a moment of following his gaze, Tink saw that he was focused on the now-solid ‘pool’ of metal on the ground surrounding Warrick.

He was a huge man, probably around seven feet tall if he wasn’t mounted, with broad shoulders and dense, rippling muscle evident under the layers of leather and padding. Every other daoine the team had encountered had been lithe and lean with runner or swimmer’s bodies, but looking around, Tink could see several other musclebound ‘elves’ in evidence besides the Huntmaster. The bulkier ones all had completely black eyes and markedly shorter ears that laid flat to the sides of their heads like a human’s rather than sticking out like the other daoine. She wondered if they were a different species or maybe a different ‘breed’ like dogs or horses.

One big, stubby finger pointed toward Warrick and the Huntmaster said something in the language of his people, something that reminded Tink of the harshest German dialect, but with a host more ‘y’ sounds and guttural stops thrown in. He looked at them sternly, but all these muscles were tense, ready to spring into action.

Tink stared up at him, trying to read him despite the language barrier and then it hit her: he was afraid. Daoine were definitely of fey descent and had varying degrees of the legendary fey aversion (really a severe allergy) to ferrous metals. The Huntmaster had just watched Warrick, even while injured, control something that looked suspiciously like a deadly poison from his perspective. As she watched, the Huntmaster’s eyes traced the gold-like bands where Isp and Osp anchored to Warrick’s arms, carefully taking in the two tentacles who were coiled up on either side of him, wary of any false moves on the daoine’s behalf.

Fighting against the pain that came whenever he breathed, Warrick looked the daoine in the eye. “I have no idea what you’re saying, but no, you can’t have any of it,” he dipped his head in the direction of the metal. “I don’t even know if you guys have refined metal on this world, so I’m not leaving a scrap behind.”

To illustrate his point, he caused the metal around him to form up into something that looked like a toolbox with a carrying handle on top. Once it was fully formed, her dropped his hand on that handle, ignoring the fact that it would be too heavy for him to carry even in full fighting form.

“He wanted to know if you could make weapons out of it.” Dana arrived with Gabraed strutting along ahead of her and Lisa walking beside her. After a moment’s pause, presumably while the graymalkin mentally elaborated, Dana added, “Most faeries and absolutely not fey work any metal besides copper and tin here. Trolls forge wellspring metal, but something made from iron or steel is legendary to them.”

“It’d be some kind of sure-kill sword for an elf, right?” Warrick guessed.

Gabraed’s response made Dana wince. “It would cause blisters wherever it touched—even in the wounds.”

“So less sure-kill and more agony-inducing. Great. I guess he wants one.”

The graymalkin looked up at the mounted daoine and spoke to him in his tongue. Evidently, English was impossible for his vocal cords, but not daoine-speak. The Huntmaster nodded and gave his reply and gestured with an open palm toward one of the daoine hunters, a female with the same powerful build as him.

Dana’s eyes widened and she drew herself up with moral indignation. “Oh he did not just say that. What is wrong with these people?!”

“What?” asked Lisa.

“Gabby said he offers him his daughter for a steel spear!” Dana almost screeched. “What the hell kind of place Is this that some dude is just going to hand over his daughter for a stabbing stick like she was a cash card?!” She shot a glare at Gabraed. “No I don’t need to ask if Alloy wants to make the trade! We’re saying ‘no’!”

Warrick groaned, but not in pain this time. “Tell him I’m flattered, but I’m taken… or betrothed, or whatever you need to say to say ‘no’, but politely,” he told the graymalkin. “Don’t tell him this yet, but I’m not really excited to make a pain spear for anyone unless we have no other choice.”

“Never tell a fey you don’t have a choice.” Dana said so quickly it was hard to tell if that was her advice of Gabraed’s. It sounded like wisdom either way. After a second, she added, “Gabraed says he’ll tell him we’ll negotiate once we reach Madgate.”

While the graymalkin relayed that message, two hunters arrived bearing the litter between them. One looked to the Huntmaster and after waiting for him to reply to Gabraed, asked him something, prompting the Huntmaster to speak to direct the same question to the graymalkin.

Gabraed flicked his ears and looked to Dana.

“They want to get moving in case this group of sasquatch were part of a larger hunting party.”

“Those were sasquatches?” Warrick asked, looking that the fallen bodies. “Jeez, that’s depressing. After all this stuff about magical creatures and stuff being real, I was kind of hoping Bigfoot would end up being kind of a chill guy.”

Lisa followed his gaze as the two litter-bearers set the litter down beside him. “According to the Books, just like a lot of the sentient species of Faerie, they have lots of different cultures. Then again, the Books say the most common culture here is ‘warlike’, so…”

He shook his head. “Thanks for trying to humor me, Lis. I’m sure Faerie will be a good mix of disappointment and horror.”

Tink helped him into place on the litter, and as the bearers lifted him up allowed her hand to slide down his arm to clasp his. “Hey, you’re not sounding like yourself. I know we’ve got to be on guard and everything, but we’re in an actual for real fantasy world. Don’t tell me you’re not at least a little excited.”

He squeezed her hand and smiled under his mask, letting out a little laugh. “You’re right. Maybe this’ll end up being pretty cool after all.” Something twinkled in his eyes as he added, “I did just get offered the hand of a fair elven princess.”

“Don’t make me regret trying to cheer you up.”

***

After several hours of walking and numerous breaks during which the daoine stopped to kill something or harvest parts from several types of plants, they emerged from the forest and into a plain of tall grass that descended gradually to a silver line on the horizon that might have been a sea.

But what drew the attention of the non-natives was the absolutely gargantuan… thing that dominated a good part of that same horizon. It might have been a structure built by magic or mundane purposes, but it resembled something more akin to a hedge many times larger than a mountain. Possibly larger than many countries on Earth. It rose into the sky, clouds visibly swirling around its flanks two thirds of the way up its bulk. It’s main body seemed to be massive thorny vines with smaller, leafy forms filling in the gap while a miasma of green mists blanketed the whole thing, making it seem ghostly despite dominating all lands around it.

Laid out on the litter as he was, Warrick could only tell something impressive had come into view by the expression on Tink’s face. “I-is that a look of wonder, or ‘holy shit, that’s dangerous looking’?”

“Definitely wonder.” Tink said in hushed tones. “You know the Greenwall in Deathgate? The barrier between the main realm and the Fairy Realm? Yeah it’s like that, only I think this one goes all the way up into space.”

An odd thought occurred to Warrick and he blinked. “There’s space here?”

“I can see a horizon, so I have to assume we’re on a planet of some kind.”

“So it’s not just another dimension, it’s a whole other universe? Like with Faerie aliens?”

Tink pursed her lips and glanced around her at the daoine hunters. They were keeping their distance from her as she was carrying the ‘toolbox’ of Warrick’s metal. The daoine were certainly alien, but they were also very likely to be primates, as were the sasquatches. It was unlikely that life on another planet in the Milky Way would have primates, much less a planet in a separate universe. “Are we sure this isn’t still our universe? Or maybe an alternate Earth?”

That question had to be tabled, however, as Dana came up to them, followed by Lisa, who was looking rather excited. “Gabraed was that big dome thing is called the Thorn Vault. It’s where Hyrilius sealed away his Faerie followers to protect them from Maeve. He say we’re going to have to go there if we plan to get home.”

Lisa added, “It also means that we might be able to find allies there or at the Cardinal towns that guard the gates into the Vault. None of them are very friendly to Maeve.”

“Cardinal Towns?” Tink asked.

“One at each cardinal direction on the Vault: Tranquil Gate in the North, Reasongate to the East, Passion Gate to the South, and the one were’ going to, Madgate. Sound familiar?”

“The 4 Books,” groaned Warrick from the litter. “And we got the book of Reason fighting Morganna, who we first learned about Hyrilius from. Very much not a coincidence, I’m guessing?”

Lisa bobbed a nod. “I think Hyrilius set all this up: the Vault, Manikin, his legacy items, the Books… maybe even more like Avalon. If I’m right, he stockpiled the means to defeat Maeve when he was only able to beat her back.”

The mask over Warrick’s mouth wrinkled as he smiled beneath it. Okay, feeling a lot better now. We clearly just landed in a real life Deathgate quest chain. Let me guess: only the Heir of Hyrilius can open any of these gates, right? And you have to go through some kind of trial to prove you’re worthy?”

“Actually…” Dana was fiddling with her armored fingers, staring pointedly at the ground. “From what we got from the Huntmaster, no one knows how to open the gates. They’ve opened in the past, usually right before Maeve returns, but they didn’t this time. They don’t know why not.”

“What a twist,” Warrick deadpanned. “What do the Books say, Lis?”

The Descendants’ resident mage shrugged. “Only how to cast the spell that created the Vault. But unless you have forty-eight other wizards and six months on your belt, that’s not going to help.”

“Hmm…” Tink said, drawing the attention of the others. Lisa raised an eyebrow at her, causing her to wince a bit. “Okay, I know nothing about magic, buy from what we’ve seen, it still follows logic, right? You follow a certain sequence with a certain set of variables and you get the same result each time.”

“Pretty much, though it has a lot of moving around energies to make that happen,” Lisa agreed.

Tink rubbed her cheeks with one hand. “Then to make something with a spell, you have to make each part and put it together—in some fashion at least.” Another nod. “Then why not just figure out what part of the spell makes the gates and… unmake them?”

Lisa looked across the plain at the towering hulk of the Vault. “That might be a very big order.”

“Still sounds like a good idea until we find more clues as to how to get the damn things open the right way. Maybe there’s a village elder who was around last time the gates opened?”

“That was only ‘seven and seven’ years ago,” said Lisa, “There would be humans who were around then, much less elves.”

“Are we really calling them elves?” asked Dana.

Warrick shrugged and immediately regretted it as his rib complained. “That or Daoine. They don’t seem to care.” Anyway, they’re taking me to a healer, right? Probably some medicine man or old crone. They might know something. This world looks like a video game, it might as well work like one.”

***

The town of Madgate did indeed look like something out of a fantasy game developer’s design bible.

Curves seemed to be the overwhelming architectural feature: no building was without some sort of curved exterior wall and everything was covered with some sort of gray-yellow plaster that matched the color of the local soil. Here and there, neglected structures were chipped and cracked to reveal thick planks of solid, greenish wood, obviously harvested from the primeval forest or one like it.

The street was paved with crushed shells resembling those of oysters lonely larger, and the thick bones of some unknown beasts, with occasional symbols painted directly on the roadways with helpful arrows pointing to nearby buildings.

Once, they passed a circular pond in the middle of a plaza where daoine were dipping buckets of clear water, and at another spot,t hey saw children at another pond washing clothes.

It was both alien and familiar, like they hadn’t traveled to another world, just to a foreign city populated by strange creatures.

The hunting party drew the attention of whoever they passed, many of whom just lifted a fist and shouted ‘Kree-yakk’, a word the visitors were starting to take to mean ‘good job’ or ‘you’re awesome’. Anyone who took more than a cursory look at the party, however, stopped to gawk at the humans among them. Then they said another word; a word the English-speakers could understand: ‘Mankind’.

“You think Hyrilius taught them that word?” Warrick asked, craning his neck to look at the throng of what he assumed were teenage daoine (which if his roleplaying and video game knowledge of elves held up, might mean they were his parents’ age) following the hunting party toward the town’s center. “The demons and motes used that word too.”

Lisa shook her head slowly. “Hyrilius was so long ago that he wouldn’t have been speaking Old English, much less Modern. Everything we know about him has been translated by magic.”

Tink frowned, looking around carefully. Part of the familiarity, she realized were the obvious Roman and Greek influences in the buildings and roads, from the plaster, to what she was sure was concrete being used in some of the fixtures. The ‘ponds’ hinted at some sort of operational irrigation system too. Yes, the Faerie people could have invented them on their own, but taken with the fact that they also knew a word that had only existed for two or three hundred years in its current form added up to one thing:

“People from Earth have come here since Hyrilius was around. A lot more often than we think.”