There were no strings on me...

Only chains.

With Chernobog running away with his tail between his legs, I was left to focus on the Blackness I had taken inside me (sounds even worse with context, trust me). Broceliande, which felt as close to shaken by Mimir's power as a mindless magical prison could get.

Good. Just you wait, you glorified timeout corner. I'd get rid of you completely, sooner or later, one way or another. Whether I had to replace myself with something else, or destroy you entirely...I would be free.

And then, maybe I'd take a stroll to the Roundhouse, and get some answers out of Merlin and Vyrt. Because, while both looked as shaken by their confrontation with Chernobog as anyone who knew the fucker would, something wasn't adding up. The fact they were both shifty bastards didn't help.

Ugh. I wondered if I could at least kill stuff now? Because I was seriously  this close to looking for the closest eldritch monster-filled universe and beating on the natives until I got bored.

Maybe there was an alternate timeline where Warhammer 40k was real? I've always wanted to fight a Hive Fleet...Maugan Ra did it, and what did he have on me?

I saw the Heads as the Blackness disappeared within me: Ying, sighing smoke in relief as his body uncoiled and relaxed, Sam, returning to his default form after shedding a shape whose shadow alone left afterimages in my arcane sight and oh, look! Even John had decided to come out, which surprised me almost as much as the fact he could be so relatively close to Britain without losing it. Progress!

And the Seelie I'd freed were already pulling themselves together, flying or walking on air out of the immense pit the Blackness had left in Faerie. A few swam straight through the earth, then leapt out of the ground like sharks out of other, not even any dirt on their skin. Once back on their feet, they began drawing upon and moving Fairie's endless land to fill the pit. Had I not been shaken after scaring Chernobog off and by the darkness roiling inside me-and let's not forget the Blackness, either-, I would have done it myself, or done it myself, but...no.

I wasn't sure how happy the Fae would be to see me, even if they knew the Black God had no hold on me anymore. But then, they'd known the first time too, hadn't they?

Maybe I shouldn't stick around. If some Fae got into my face, they might lose theirs.

'No applause!' I told the Heads, waving lazily with both hands. 'Just contemplating enacting genocide against one of my favourite science-fantasy factions.'

John grunted, sounding as sullen as ever, but unsurprised. 'Feels like Silva.'

'That, or Chernobog is imitating the strigoi's surface-level mannerisms,' Sam said, giving me a considering look. 'Mind, you sound like yourself, Silva, and all of my senses are telling me you are, but so did Thor's, didn't they?' The wendigo smiled humourlessly. 'And I don't wanna end up like him.'

'You absorbed the Blackness.' Ying sounded halfway between amusement and disbelief. 'I felt it go away, like...ah, it makes no sense when put into words. Like a void being consumed by a wholeness?'

'Filled?' I suggested.

'No, not filled...more like oneness surrounding and removing nothingness...' He shook his head, paused briefly, then waved whatever thought had come to him off. 'Bah. I can show you a vision, if I must.'

'How  did you absorb the Blackness, strigoi?' Oberon asked, faceplate splitting vertically down the middle, then sliding away into his helmet.

A perfectly innocent question. Right? Except he knew there was only one way I could have saved myself, let alone scared off Chernobog and removed his foulness.

'With Mimir's power,' I said, giving him a steady, considering look. 'Wasn't that the reason you asked for me? Because you thought I could remove the Blackness?'

Or had you hoped I would die, Oberon? Hoped I'd fail and either die or run away, so you could scream about incompetence or unwillingness to help, or whatever the hell else you could cook up?

'Indeed it was,' he replied smoothly, crossing his arms. 'But we only dared hope you could halt or slow it down, after which it would remain forever, a stain on our realm, unless we found another solution...' The Seelie lowered his head, the helmet slipping into the gorger, revealing a pale, blue-eyed face, gauntness accentuating the high cheekbones. His hair was white and thin, so thin, I could see his scalp under it. He only looked a fraction of his true age, but still far older than I'd ever seen him.

'The debt is repaid.' As far as my ears could tell, Oberon had murmured the words, but they still rang like thunder, shaking Faerie for as far as I could see. 'The Seelie bear no more enmity towards you, David Silva.' He emphasised "no more", which...tch.

No, no, they were right. I shouldn't have expected a celebration, or even thanks. I could already hear the arguments. "Yes, you didn't kill them, but why didn't you defend yourself from the Black God? Why didn't you train Mimir's perception more, so you could foresee it? Why didn't you take precautions? Why...?"

Why, why, why, indeed. But I felt too tired, at the moment, to brood over whether it had been my fault or not, and how much suffering I deserved for it.

The shock at said realisation came infinitely closer to killing me than Chernobog ever had, let me tell you.

'I,' wait, was I about to thank him? Why? 'Understand.' Then, feeling we were about to start staring at each other like awkward idiots, which I already did whenever I saw someone, I continued. 'If there is nothing else...?'

I glanced at the Heads as I said it. John's arms were crossed, and his face sported a look of bored disapproval, but not of me, for once.

'ARC is not a mercenary organisation,' he said, looking at Oberon, eyes like black pits. 'We came because we didn't want to cause an incident between your people and the Global Gathering.'

'By which he means,' Ying, who had moved a few metres away without me seeing, despite the fact I'd been looking straight at him, said. 'We did not want you using our refusal as an excuse to attempt to pull something on Earth.' The dragon, in his human form, was crouching, gingerly pushing together...ah. I thought it was weird to see him not smoking.

'Eye for an eye,' Oberon said, looking at John rather than Ying. Did he think the ghost was our designated speaker? That'd have been like putting me on a cheer team.

'I wasn't finished,' John said. 'ARC is not a charity, either. We don't do things for free.'

'We'd do it out of the goodness of our hearts, if we had either,' Sam chimed in with a literally sharklike grin. 'But we won't ask for anything. Honest! Maybe just a little suggestion?' Antlers grew from his head as he pulled his hood back, then he used some other creature's power to blacken them. 'Remember him? Let's not be like him.'

'What are you  suggesting, Shiftskin?' Oberon asked, fully aware the Fae liberated from the Blackness were now blatantly gawking at us..

In an elegant, inconspicuous way, of course. They were Fair Folk, after all.

Shiftskin stood up straight, smiling like the Krampus who'd got the children. 'As I said, we won't  ask for anything. But it would be real nice, if, say, kids around the world stopped disappearing and being replaced with changelings. Don't you think?" Maybe feeling the "joke" had dragged on long enough, Sam made his antlers disappear. 'No matter how likely they are to become threats to civilization.'

'It's never obious what civilisation they were supposed to have been a threat to before it becomes too late to apologise and explain.' Ying stood up, his pipe back together, without any sign it had ever been damaged.

'Unlike your visual metaphor, Exile.' Oberon looked like he wanted to roll his eyes, but valued his regal image too much for that. He opted to merely gesture at the once more whole pipe instead. 'Some things cannot be put together without sign of how they were broken, swept under the carpet. I suppose the fact you did that is meant to show that you are better at undoing damage than us?'

'If you go looking for insults, you'll always find some.' Ying shrugged, waving his pipe vaguely. 'Especially implied ones. Oh, those are like mistakes and blame. You always find some...'

'Don't go off-track,' Sam grumbled with an annoyed glance at the dragon, then turned back to Oberon. 'You think you're doing both us and yourselves a favor with the changelings, hence why you don't ask for thanks or hold us to be in your debt for the kid swaps.'

'Are you saying we are actually harming you through that?' Oberon asked, sounding surprised by the idea. Screw sovereignty, borders and family bonds, why would you have been even slightly peeved at some kidnappings if they ultimately, allegedly, benefitted everyone?

'I'm saying, if we decided to preemptively take care of Fae threats to Earth, we have far more people who can go through all of you than the reverse. I'm one, standing next to three others.'

Woah, wait, what? I was in the Heads' league now? I'd be expected to take on the shit they did?

No, no, what had possessed me to not die? Maybe I could just let loose the Blackness inside me and end it all? Suddenly, oblivion looked as welcoming as Mia's open...arms.

Heh...who was I kidding? I wouldn't have been able to do it even if I hadn't remembered her first.

'There's no need for threats, Shiftskin.' Oberon again, looking at me like he'd stepped on a worm and it had spat out a cobra.

'Facts are plenty threatening. Should we move on to promises?'

I knew what they were doing. It was like a good cop, bad cop routine, but expanded: Ying as the lazy arsehole carelessly slinging shit to piss off Oberon, Sam as the jackass throwing his weight around, and John as the prickly but fair voice of reason.

God help us...

'Discussions will continue at a later date. Now that King Oberon's realm is safe, I'm sure he will be much calmer next time he meets with the Global Gathering.' "Or else", John didn't say, for there was no need. 'I'm sure you would much rather return to Queen Titania now, no? The apparatus of state must be reassembled, your people informed they are now safe...and I'm sure you miss your wife, don't you?' he asked the Fae.

Oberon smiled pityingly at the ghost gestalt. 'What do you know of marriage? The hesitation before you added the last part tells me everything.'

'All the spouses I've lost or buried should tell you even more,' John said, voice growing colder, alongside with the air. 'I am humanity in microcosm.'

'The scum of humanity.'

'To be fair, you need good people to have scum,' Sam said, scratching one ear as his eyes grew round and black and his mouth morphed into a beak, while grey feathers sprouted over a now heart-shaped face. 'You know, to compare and contrast. We all know there are no scumbags among Fae, so I must commend you for your ability to read people, Your Majesty.'

Oberon's mouth twitched. 'That was almost amusing, cannibal.'

'You can use it!'

It went on like that for a while, with me trying to disappear between Sam and Ying, and make as little sound as possible(yes, I did almost die from it). Eventually, Oberon agreed to John's earlier statement that discussions continue at a later date, and ordered his subjects to form up a line behind him, so they might go find Puck first, then return to the bulk of their people.

We were so happy to be rid of this that we-or, at least, I, and the Heads gave no sign of the opposite-didn't even think about the Unseelie. Where were they? Had they all run away when the Blackness had appeared?

***

Picture this: all the fear and uncertainty of a world. Billions of sapients, quintillions of sentients, trillions of beings that fit in neither category.

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

Picture flight or flight instinct, broken and stuck on flight. Picture anxiety and angst, terror and despair. Picture the cold, quiet unease that is the closest machines can come to fear.

Picture the folly of the Pure, on a smaller scale: only fear and its facets removed from a single planet.

Violently.

Not excised. Torn out. Not destroyed, cast away, that the shame and weakness of the past might be forgotten.

Out of sight, out of mind. Right?

Where does life go without fear to inspire caution? Far, far beyond what was expected of it. Not life, as most beings understand it, after a while.

For once, the monster they created had nothing to do with it. Ironic, that the things that always sat at the forefront of its makers' minds care naught for the false bravery born of their removal.

The monster goes on, walking the void, striding the stars. It is fear, after all, and the most primal and numerous of its components fear nothing more than dying without reproducing. The monster cannot do that. As such, it settles on growing and surviving forever.

The monster empties every world in every galaxy of the things it recognises in itself. The beings left behind do not last long enough before its journey is over and its attention turned back on them.

A mercy, perhaps.

Where does the monster go in an empty universe? It knows not what lies beyond, for its makers did not, either. Eternal isolation?

So it seems, until it is found and bound by beings lesser than it, but filled with the emotion that makes it up. It tries to remove it, but cannot. Intrigued, it lets itself be shackled. Its captors, burning with panic it can taste but not touch, flay and wrap it into its own skin, folding its body multiple times, until it can fit into a small bag.

Its captors travel the multiverse, harnessing the monster's power and using it as an attack dog to strike down those who would prey on and horrify others. It is a noble, if bloody way of fighting fire with fire.

Then Cloudshade finds them, and rips the leather bag from their cold, dead hands.

They keep their first and last promise to her. The Unseelie sees nothing but foolishness in this. What good is honesty if it brings your death?

The monster sees its new holder is untouchable, just like her predecessors. And her home, and the realms adjacent to it, are full of beings like her. So many of them...

It is attracted to what it cannot have. Few aren't.

***

The thing that appeared from thin air, as it crawled out of the leather bag than unfurled into it...

Mia shook her head as horror that would have broken the minds and stopped the hearts of every human on Earth assailed her mind. The psychic attack itself was harmless, but the images it conjured...

She was down to looking at Szabo in search of nicer things to distract her. Hilarious.

'Huh,' the strigoi tugged at his beard as an amalgamation of an universe's fears stared at him. The nightmares of more beings than there were quarks in his reality paraded before his eyes, and he could only lament how painfully mediocre most of them were. Prevented him from seeing the highlights, and he didn't have the time to sift through them. 'You remind me of the things I find in my dumpster.  Far prettier, though.'

The monster howled from a trillion mouths that rose and fell back into its false flesh just to express its pleasure. Fear of mockery and dismissal was just another part of it, after all, and all that caused or was caused by fear empowered it.

The monster took a world-shaking step forward as it slithered over Paladin's ice, breaking the shards it flew over into dust. Crawling under the cold mist, fear rose from it in waves. No attack, this-merely its nature. Still enough to drive every human and animal on Earth stark raving mad for a few seconds, before their hearts and brains burst.

Szabo's mouth opened in a jaw-cracking yawn as he drank its aura, growing in power by the moment, and he raised a finger to his lips as it cooed in surprise. Amplified by lifeforce, his whisper drowned out the un-sound that would have reduced the world to a shapeless mass of ever-shifting protoplasm-the fear of nothing lasting.

'Everything I do,' Szabo smiled lazily. 'Feeds you. But the same goes for you.'

The monster hissed something that might have been a question, but Paladin drew Durandal from its sheath before its effects could manifest. A head-sized void that removed matter, energy and spacetime as it grew was obliterated by the sword, for Durandal's legend meant it could destroy anything, if its potential was properly used. Even nothingness.

'Come on.' Szabo grabbed his neck, twisting it backwards. It healed so that he was facing forward once more long before the sound of the first crack filled the air. The strigoi gave Cloudshade an amused look. 'Do you have any other tricks?'

The Unseelie's kick, too fast for him to perceive, which would have shattered his body, was stopped cold by Durandal's flat. Cloudshade looked up at Paladin, dark eyes wide.

'It could have been the blade,' the undead said. 'Take our olive branch, and stay down.'

'What do you even want?' Mia asked, frustrated. 'You think you'll just get away with unleashing that freak on Earth?'

'Ah, calm down, zmeu,' Szabo waved a hand dismissively as the monster directed its full psychic power at him, and rammed into a wall pure mental might would never crack. 'We'll take care of it. After all, it's not even a patch on-'

***

'Nacht,' Tamar Thousandhands began. Two meeting with this pair of bastards in the aether in a row? God... 'You are sure?'

'Solarex is,' Hex answered in the place of his suspiciously quiet partner. 'Strigoi are unholy beings of decay and destruction. Gods with similar attributes should not be able to affect them, for the same reason you can't burn fire.'

'We've never tested it...' Tamar said as he tried to remember an instance of a strigoi being wounded or altered by a deity similar to Chernobog. 'It was always other gods. Creation, love, courage, nature...'

'Yes. Which...Nacht?' Hex asked, glancing up at the dark being. 'What is wrong with you?'

'Oh, don't mind me,' it said in a distant voice. 'I'm just experiencing the equivalent of watching a skin cell you shed growing up into...hmm.'

'I don't care,' Hex said curtly. 'You can watch through shadows, or through negative emotions.'

'What? Come back to-' the Goetia leader started.

'Head Tamar,' Hex cut him off. 'Listen. Nacht's skin cell can wait. If King Sun is right, it means Chernobog could only do what he did if he was allied with a god that opposes his nature, or if-'

***

'He ate Belobog,' I said quietly as we made our way back to Uluru through the portal John had opened by binding it to Fairie. 'Or trapped him. He was buried inside Chernobog's body, and...' I swallowed. 'He begged me to kill him.'

I never wanted to even think of suicide again, but begging for death? As a god of life and joy? It was...

'I see,' Ying said, moving closer to put a claw on my shoulder as we entered the Internal Affairs headquarters. 'Why don't you tell us more, David? We have to confirm we are clean, anyway...'

***

 Avalon

Some people joked that, for a leader, Bedivere was unusually accustomed to kneeling.

Literally speaking, it was true. He knelt to pray, and for certain ceremonies. He had knelt to be knighted, long ago, and had knelt before his first and only true king.

Of course, Bedivere knew what the remarks really meant. Old age had brought him neither deafness nor foolishness...not more than he had started with, at least.

Some thought he was spineless. For giving up the Sword of Promised Victory to a traitor, mostly. But Bedivere believed the Lady's betrayal of Merlin was, like his king's almost-death, a necessary part of the Lord's plan.

Necessity...was there a fouler word?

Others thought he was too submissive, both in public and in private. How dare he retreat to meditate and contemplate creation, when he could have held onto Excalibur and carved out a new kingdom?

Leaving aside the absurd notion of him denying a determined Nimue, and his abysmal skill at ruling, he...had not wanted to.

He had gotten sick of violence, for a time. Centuries, truly. He knew he could have stayed in the light, helped shepherd humanity towards its potential. The Round Table had been just a glimpse of what people could achieve, if they believed in might for right.

Then had come the wars, civil and foreign alike, and the colonies, and...

In a way, Bedivere was thankful for Nimue finding him monsters to hunt and villains to thwart. All in the shadows, of course. As unambiguously evil as possible, lest he turn his attention to Britain's people.

He had known he was being distracted, and had played along. Cowardly? Beyond a shadow of doubt.

Arthur looked so serene in his death-sleep that it was almost painful to see him. The crown of his head had been split, alongside his regal one, by Clarent. A wound that would, could not heal, until the appointed hour came.

'But when will that hour be, Arthur?' Bedivere whispered, sitting on a stump next to the stone table that served as his king's eternal deathbed. 'Will I even live to see it?'

He was leaning on Rongomyniad like it was a walking stick, for all that he was sitting, feeling more weary than he had ever been since Camlann. An illusion of the mind, for he could not tire any more than the world could by turning, but...

'I thought it would come when our people lost their hearts, but you did not rise. I thought it would come when darkness rose over Europe from Germany, but you did not rise. I thought it would come...so many times, in recent years, but you did not rise, even after my failure in Faerie. I...'

Dare he admit it? The shame hurt more than the phantom pain of his lost hand, which never dulled or sharpened, except when he stopped paying attention to it.

'I think I am losing control of my Knights. I think they are working behind my back, towards purposes I cannot discern, and which the Lord does not see fit to reveal to me. I feel like I know nothing about what I  must know to defend Britain and the world.'

No answer. Of course. There was never an answer. There was never a sound in Avalon, not from its only human inhabitant, nor the imperceivable workers and guardians, numerous and powerful beyond Bedivere's comprehension. Avalon was a reflection of old Britain, but without any of the filth humanity inevitably brought to its homes. An image of what could have been, and could yet be, if...

No point getting lost in tangents. This was a sham of a confession: to a friend, not a priest, and a friend who was deaf and mute at that. How gutless could he be?

'We need a saviour, Arthur. I have spoken to the Lady and the sorcerer-oh, yes, he is free again, liberated through another taking his place-and they say the same. We need someone to lead us. Please, I beg of you, Lord...'

Even more, apparently. Bedivere could not pray properly, one-handed as he was, and he wasn't sure if he was speaking to his Lord or his king, both of whom seemed equally cold and distant at the moment.

As such, he only realised a hand was grasping his when he opened his eyes and looked down.

Arthur's hand was pale and spattered with blood, but not bloated by death as most corpses' would have been. He...it...

His friend's arm had moved. One hand still was pressed against his chest, over his heart, but the other hanged over the table's edge, limp after Bedivere let go of it in shock. This had never happened before. Was it time?

No. The arm was not limp, he saw. The hand was pointing down.

An answer to the old Knight's question. Not one he had expected, much less wanted, but understood perfectly.

He could not believe he was thinking this, but he would have taken even Lancelot instead.