We stood in a pile of rubble. The remains of a broken civilization scattered across the landscape around us.

"Did something go wrong?" Kieran asked, looking around.

"I'd say something did," Jack said, "buildings don't just fall down for no reason."

"I mean, are we in the right place?"

"We should be," Jack said.

"We are," I bent down and pulled a book out from beneath a piece of rotting wood. "Look familiar?"

"This is the library?" Kieran asked. He turned around, watching the crumbled wood stretch across the horizon. "That's the Great Hall?" He shook his head, like you do when you can't make sense of something and feels like someone's stuffed cotton wool in your head, only you can't shake the feeling away. "What happened?"

"Um..." both men looked down at me. "I have this horrible feeling that I did this," I said.

"Why?" Jack asked.

"How?" Kieran said at the same time.

"I was in the Great Hall," I tried to explain, "and I felt the dead, like inside the walls." I frowned. That sounded wrong. "Like the whole building was leaning on them and they couldn't bear it but they couldn't stop either because they'd been chained to that spot, you know?"

"So you what," Kieran asked, "undid the chains?"

"Well," I said, "what would you do?" I already knew the answer to that. It was the entire reason I was there, then. Kieran was the kind of person who would set them free, if he could. He just didn't have the right tools for it before. He didn't have me.

"We've got to get a move on," Jack said, making his way through the rubble. "Don't know how much time we've got."

"Do you know where you're going?" I asked, following him.

"Yeah," Jack said. He didn't stop walking or turn to look at me when he spoke. "Coronation's only ever in one place. This," he shrugged towards the debris, "doesn't change anything."

I felt like we spent half of eternity walking through the remains of the once great Court of Faerie. I didn't know where we were going so I had no way of measuring the distance we had to travel, or how the landscape should have looked as we passed it on our way to stop the coronation. Likewise, there was no way of knowing how far Zephan would get before we got there. I couldn't shake the feeling that we'd be too late.

Apprehension prickled along my skin, making the tiny hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stand on end. The air felt thick and heavy with the expectant energy of an electrical storm.

We came to the ends of the debris and started down a path that was barely more than a dirt track.

"They've already passed this way," Jack said. He sounded light and unconcerned but I caught a muscle in his jaw twitch with the tension of keeping his voice controlled.

"How can you tell?" I asked. Jack bent down and pressed a finger against the earth.

"Trampled grass around the edges," he said. "And the dirt hasn't quite settled down after the pounding of thousands of feet working their way across the plains."

"There isn't normally a path here," Kieran muttered.

Jack stood up. "Yeah," he said, "that's actually how I know it's fresh."

"Do we really have time to bugger around like this?" I asked.

"Bugger?" Kieran tilted his head.

"Eugh, never mind," I pushed him forward. "Let's just keep moving."

I felt something tug at my ankle. I fell over and landed heavily against a stone on the pathway. I grazed the palm of my hand on the rock. I drew my breath in in a sharp hiss as the pain hit me. Blood seeped out across the side of my hand.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah," I said, letting them help me up. "It's just my hand," I held it out for them to see. With my arm extended across the path, a drop of blood wound its way down the side of my wrist and fell - plop - to land on the exposed dirt. I watched the thirsting earth soak the moisture up greedily. The prickle of energy along my skin intensified suddenly.

I doubled over in sudden pain. Jack and Kieran supported me on either side, holding me beneath my elbows.

"Do you feel that?" I asked them.

"What?" Kieran asked.

"No," Jack said.

A shadow crawled over us and I saw the sky grow dark and violent. Thunder rumbled across the landscape. My skin crawled. A feeling like pins and needles crept through my limbs. I had to gasp for breath around the suddenly choking electric current in the air.

"I'm going to," I gasped, "circle." I couldn't seem to get enough breath to make a full sentence. I pushed them away, hoping they understood enough. I grabbed at the charm around my waist and saw Jack dragging Kieran away from me.

I felt the circle click into place but it was lighter than normal. More filmy, as though I were standing inside a giant bubble made from honey, rather than the normal protective amber that surrounded me when I needed it.

The prickling sensation died down to a tingling heat and I could breathe again. But I could still feel something, pressing in on me. It was like all that energy I'd felt crawling over my skin was lurking outside the bubble, held back but still exerting pressure, like water in a dam. I wondered how long it would hold against the onslaught. I had a feeling that the roving circle wasn't built for this kind of pressure.

"How far are we?" I asked. My voice sounded husky and breathless.

"Close," Jack said, gazing into the distance. "I can see banners. Maybe ten minutes walk."

"Go," I said. I couldn't see anything. I wondered if it was because I was so much shorter than Jack that I couldn't see, or if it was because of the film of my circle. Maybe I just needed glasses. I felt a twinge of pain in the base of my spine.

"What's wrong?" Kieran asked.

"Remember those chains I was talking about," I said, "in the Great Hall?" They nodded. "There are a lot more of them out there," I tried to explain as the pain twisted through my abdomen. "Something," I gasped. The pain was tearing me apart from the inside. I had to get this over with quickly. The pressure on the outside of the circle was closing in. I felt sweat prickle my brow. "Something happened. I can feel the chains." It might have been what I'd done to the Great Hall, but I thought it had more to do with my blood soaking into the ground. Remembering the tug on my ankle before I fell, I was almost certain that it was the blood. And I didn't think it had happened by accident. The spirits of the land were screeching along my soul, like nails on a black board. They clamoured for my attention.

They had it.

"Go," I ordered Kieran and Jack. This time, they listened. They turned back down the path and started walking.

"Okay," I said, watching them move away from me. I was alone. Sort of. I could do this. I could do this and nobody would interfere.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I felt myself kind of slide into a new place. I didn't move physically, I know that. It was one of those metaphysical things that are hard to explain.

I guess, if I had to call it something, I'd say it was like astral projecting. Spirit walking. My body stayed where it was but, within the space between nothing and eternity, I was gone.

I watched the landscape conjure itself around me. I was standing on the edge of a precipice, looking down at the river at the bottom of the cliff. It was a violent river, intent on carving its way through the landscape. Water rushed over unseen obstacles, and crashed back down on itself with so much force that the surface of the water tore through the layers underneath, like it was actively trying to drown something.

I took a step back from the precipice, turning away. I saw a man standing a few steps away from me, off to the side. He was tall, with sleek dark hair, and he was wrapped in a grey cloak. I noticed that the pain from the dead pressing in on me had vanished at the same time that I noticed the intense heat of the man's power. Like a wave, his energies crashed over me. I might have drowned if it wasn't for the bubble holding me in its embrace.

Something in the, I guess you could call it the flavor of his energy was familiar. I knew him. I wasted time trying to reconcile the disparate information my mind was giving me. The image that went with the flavor of his energy wasn't a tall man with dark hair, he should have been hunched and grey.

But things were different here. The river, the cliff, the clouds, heavy with the promise of rain and coloring the landscape grey. This was not the world of Faerie. Not the one I knew, at any rate. It was both somehow more and something less.

"Vonnegut," I said, acknowledging that the powerful man in front of me was indeed the aged professor.

"Don't do this," he said.

"You have no dominion here," I told him. My voice echoed across the landscape. It was as though the voices of the dead had picked up my words and turned it into a chant. They rolled my words over and sung them into the restless wind.

"You don't know what you're doing," he said.

"I know exactly what I'm doing," I said. The wind sounded its voiceless agreement.

"If you take them away," he said, "you'll destroy this land. We can't live without them." A part of me wondered if that were true. If, by freeing the trapped spirits of the dead, I was killing an entire civilization, was I capable of justifying that. Could I do it? A louder part of me already knew the answer to that.

"You're already dead," I told the professor. "A civilization that only stays alive on the energies of the dead." I shook my head. "Do you think that's really life?"

"That depends, doesn't it?" He took a step closer to me. "Are you really alive?" I looked him firmly in the eye when I answered.

"No."

A look of uncertainty passed through the professor's eyes. I couldn't prove his reasoning wrong, in fact, I had to agree with him, but that's where I had him. The land was like me, a mere shadow of death pretending to be alive. I understood that. But where he seemed to think that was a reason for me to stop, I knew that was the reason I had to keep going.

The professor must have seen the resolve in my eyes. He attacked me. He threw wave after wave of energy at my bubble.

"Stop," I said. The ghosts pinned him in their cool embrace, wrapping their chains around him. He froze in mid motion as the grey light of this world solidified around him.

"You can't do this," he shouted, struggling against his invisible bonds.

"She has to do this," a voice whispered. The woman in the dark cloak appeared between us. Vonnegut sagged against the arms that held him. All the fight seemed to drain out of him as he gazed upon her.

"So they've been bound," I whispered into the wind, feeling along the edges of my mind for the ethereal chains that held the dead. "So they are unbound." I felt the bindings rip apart like tissue paper.

The woman grew more solid, in front of me. I watched her body fill out. The shadows beneath the cloak weren't as deep. Hair peeked out around the edges of her cloak, the black curls reminding me of my own. She started to walk towards me, closing the distance between us. When she stood just outside my circle, on the very edges of my aura, she reached up to the hood of the cloak. Slowly, she slid the fabric back.

"There's still work to be done," she said. Her voice echoed with the whispering of a thousand voices. But her face, her eyes, her skin, her hair; they were all mine. I'd say it was like looking into a mirror except that this mirror was looking back at me with an expression all of its own.

"Who are you?" I asked her.

"I am death," she smiled. "I am justice. I am the force that balances all forces."

"And there is imbalance still," I said, "in Faerie." She smiled more broadly at that and I realized that I'd taken the words from her mouth. It was like I was completing the other half of an ancient ritual, only I didn't know what my part was.

"You don't have to know," she said, answering my thought. "You are the other half." I stared into her eyes - my eyes - and nodded. "Say it," she whispered.

"I call upon the wild hunt," I said. "I invoke you." The bubble between us disappeared. I fell into her, and the lady Death fell into me, and we were falling together, falling through darkness.

Then we were standing on the edge of a crowded field and it was raining.

------------------------------

Calm before the storm.

What do you think will happen now that Laurel's invoked the wild hunt?

Til next time,

x zuz