Rebirth and Second Chances

Chapter 167: Life or Death

The Morrigu, King Lugh and Consort Puck regained consciousness soon after the System imposed penalties and rewards. Morrigan, Macha, and Bodb seemed to be completely healed, although their complexion appeared wan. Lugh and Puck were suffering under the penalties of the debuff Queen Mab had earned for her faction and were still injured.

Puck's chest cavity had been ripped open; his ribs shattered into splinters that were then embedded within his own organs. With no structure to support or maintain cohesion, he was lying in a pool of blood with his organs spilled out.

Queen Mab was the only one that had not lost consciousness, Lugh had sacrificed himself to buttress her defenses, using a knockback spell and shield at the moment Morrigan had struck and the columns had exploded. She'd survived, but she wasn't healed. How she was maintaining structural stability with her body bisected could only be attributed to will and magic.

I watched and waited as she cast healing spells, ignoring Puck and Lugh in her desperation to repair the damage done to her own body. I was probably being an idiot; I knew if the roles were reversed she would have no compunction in attacking before I was healed, but just because she had no honor, didn't mean I was bereft of a sense of what was right.

Finally, she realized that her magics were not going to be enough to repair the damage and she removed a relic, an item of power from her storage device. Under normal circumstances, it would have been rude to use perception to identify the item, but we were way passed rudeness. Extending my perception, I examined the relic, a jade vial, nothing out of the ordinary, it was enchanted to protect and preserve whatever it contained. In this instance, it contained a spark of the Divine, and that was the true treasure.

Somehow Mab had gotten blood from Danu. Blood that was still brimming with the power of creation. Blood that could heal any wound, restore life to the recently dead. It was a potent treasure. One that would save the life of Puck, but she barely gave her seriously wounded consort a second glance before she quaffed the blood. And healed.

The results were dramatic. She had literally been holding herself together, her hands anchoring her torso and pelvis together. But her will and frantic efforts could only do so much. She hadn't been perfectly aligned, but it wasn't until Danu's blood began repairs that I realized the deformity.

My mind had noticed the difference, the strange alignment in form as her body was joined slightly off-center and tilted, slipping towards the right, precariously close to sliding off. But the vial of blood was miraculous. Restoring her completely, aligning top and bottom, and realigning her center reinstating her so that symmetry was achieved.

I wondered if that vial of Danu's blood had been the reason Mab ignored the System warnings and the debuff she and her Court had earned. I thought it likely since the blood of a Goddess could even remove and cure Mab's loss of fertility. Danu wasn't one of the fertility goddesses, but she did give life.

Mab wasn't a complete psychopath, she did have real feelings for Puck, and had saved a single drop of blood to effect healing. Healing that required more than the power contained in that one drop. It was nauseating watching as organs, intestines, even blood began trying to repair themselves, to move back into position. Watching flesh seal, wounds fade, and bone shards wiggle their way out of organs to reassemble was jarring. It was not something that a mortal mind should process.

If I were a better man, I might feel some sympathy for her husband, but I didn't, watching as time seemed to rewind and what was broken was made whole garnered no empathy from me. The reason the Sidhe had embraced the triumvirate was to guard against the corruption and madness that rulers could at times embrace. Lugh and Puck were Mab's co-rulers because they were her equal in power. They were more than capable of over-riding her disastrous policies but had chosen to coddle her. They had allowed her neurosis to impact their entire faction. They deserved as much of the blame as she did for enabling her.

The Morrigu had regrouped while Mab healed, recognizing that the Sithern had transformed the Court into an arena and that an audience was watching, they were wary of appearing weak or uncertain. But any desire to take advantage of the Seelie or re-engage me in battle was discarded. They were Battle Maidens, and although that meant they were preeminent in skills and abilities when it came to combat, it did not mean they were invincible. Even the God of War stumbled in battle occasionally.

The trick was to concede those battles that were not winnable, or where the number of deaths was untenable, as a stop-gap measure. Lose the battle but win the war was a maxim they had been practicing since before they became Queen of the Unseelie. It was how they dealt with the Seelie. A game of Go where increment movements may result in large-scale wins or losses.

Lugh and Puck were both channeling energies to Mab, their efforts drawing the pity of everyone. Even having used a relic of power, healing herself completely, her husbands shared their magic, filling her power well. For Puck, it was at his own expense, sacrificing any chance to finish healing his own wounds. We watched as he tried to stuff his intestines back inside his body cavity while spending his magics on a woman that was completely healed. The sight was heart wrenching, gruesome, and a poignant reminder of how far Puck had fallen, and what lengths he would go for love.

He had once been the trickster, a Seelie of unapparelled joy. Playing pranks, spreading goodwill, his actions were often layered, meant to share lessons of morality, hidden behind the trappings of pranks and pratfalls. Now he was reduced to an errand boy, so infatuated with the illusion that Mab had crafted that the good he had once engendered had degenerated into just one more way to oppress and humiliate the Sidhe.

Everyone focused on his ministrations, heart still beating, not as steady or as frequent as before, Lugh was finally satisfied that Mab was at peak condition and stopped sharing his power. Puck had exhausted his magic reserves moments earlier. Lugh switched his focus to Puck and began working frantically, spending magic and his own life force in an attempt to heal him before it was too late. The two men had spent too much time together not to have established their own connection. They might not love each other as fiercely as they did Mab, but they did love.

I watched unmoved at the events unfolding before me. Any emotion I had well hidden. Mab was responsible for what had been done to Irvin, Cedric, Uron, and Lohne. I had no sympathy for her or her court. If her consort died, the only concessions I was willing to make was that I would not interfere in the succession of the Seelie. I would not consider the faction, the conquered people, and demand their surrender. But they would pay reparations. And I would have my seat as the Tuatha de Danann faction affirmed as part of the World government.

The world watched as Puck took his last breath and his heart stopped, Lugh's attempts to heal him made in vain. A man that had been feared, loved, desired, and reviled was no more, and the Seelie was without a King. As he took his last breath, Aspen and Pine who had been relegated to the viewing gallery with the rest of the Sidhe shimmered and took flight, they flew in a pattern of respect, circling the fallen, a tribute for the broken Seelie King, the man who had once been a boy filled with wonder and amazement.

Tribute flight completed, they landed and transformed once again into Cernunnos.

They stood, one at the head, one at the feet, of Consort Puck, hands extended in benediction, and as they bowed their heads in tribute, their antlers began to spark. There had been theories that posited that lightning striking random bits of minerals was the spark of evolution that created the very first single cell, the bacterial cell that all life evolved from. The Sidhe had spoken and walked with the Gods so they knew this not to be the case.

But lightning was both destructive and life-giving. A jolt could stop or start a heart, I wondered if that were their intent. To restore life to Puck, using the lightning that they could channel and control as one of the gifts of Danu.

Each Cernunnos sprouted impressive antlers, both sporting twelve points. The small sparks of static electricity that jumped from point to point grew each time the spark bridged a gap between points. The voltage increased as the sparks became larger and larger until bolts of lightning began to crisscross the arena. Aspen and Pine were immovable as bolt after bolt of lightning was tossed between them.

And as the voltage and size of each bolt grew, a ripple in space and time began to take shape. An opening made possible only when the Queens and Kings of Sidhe breathed their last. A rift that connected this world and the afterlife. The Summerlands were many things, but one of the reasons for its existence was its function as an afterlife.

In that place, true death was held in abeyance, and those Monarchs that had served were welcomed into that eternal land of spring and summer to walk fields of wheat and forests of Oak, with ancestors until the ends of time.

Unlike Gwyn ap Nudd and the Wild Hunt, the Sidhe that passed through this veil between life and death could not be summoned as harbingers of vengeance or justice, they were exempt from all but the last battle. And only on that fateful day, when the Universe was nothing but the dying embers of collapsing stars, when the final battle would begin, those that had idled in companionship and serenity would make their last sacrifice and take that final step, leaving the Summerlands once more, as the realm collapsed and Ragnarok began.

The rift formed, the edges held open, and in the distance, the Gods who dreamed, the Tuatha de Danaan Pantheon stirred in their slumber, their dream having enough will and intent to restore Puck. Wounds closed, burns were healed, and his beauty and innocence was restored.

The bolts of lightning that the Cernunnos were exchanging became a frenzied Faraday cage that separated Mab, Lugh, and Puck from everyone else, and a choice was given. The Morrigu and I were excluded, witnesses to these events, but separate. We stood in silent isolation and watched as Puck make his choice and stepped through that portal.

The Cernunnos had restored the final choice to the Sidhe. A gift Arawn, God of the Underworld had once offered. A gift that many knew to have been lost. No one had been offered final choice since the Gods were constrained by sleep. For those given the choice, they could enter the afterlife the Summerlands hosted, or refuse and take their chance with the wheel of reincarnation.

The world watched as this miracle; this gift of choice was offered once again to the Sidhe. A sign that magic and ritual long lost or forgotten was returning. That the Sidhe could reclaim what had been lost.

As the World watched, Lugh made his choice and followed Puck, choosing to spend eternity with his husband. Sparing one last glance of regret and love for Mab, because he knew. Knew that she was not ready to take this final journey. Knew that she would refuse the choice, he absolved and forgave her for her choice. Until the duel she had issued was resolved she was barred, anathema to the peace that pervaded the afterlife of the Summerlands.

Although they still lived and had the ability to refuse the offer the Cernunnos had provided with no penalty, it was only now that they remembered who they had once been. Who they had been before corruption, anger, and despair had set in. And a dynasty that had ruled for ages beyond imagining ended.

[World Quest Announcement: The Seelie Monarchy stands empty. A Ranking tournament will be hosted by the Tuatha de Danaan and Unseelie faction to identify who will ascend as the new Ranked Monarchs for the Seelie faction.]

Mab was Queen no more. In her stead was a vengeful, angry woman that would see my blood flow. The System announcement had barely registered when she began the ritual of challenge. Ignoring the closing of the rift and the last opportunity to gaze upon the face of the men that had loved and supported her beyond reason.

She had made her choice and foresworn the Summerlands and her husbands. It would be decided here today the final fate between a jaded and dethroned Queen, and an idealistic and barely ensconced King. The Summerlands only offered choice once. If she failed her, she would have no choice but to enter the river of forgetfulness and stake her Karmic balance on the outcome with reincarnation.

Because we would fight, and I would see her dead.