My eyes weren't permanently gone. Merlin, for all his sheer power, was farther from divinity than even I was. As such, though I staggered and almost fell, it was from shock rather than pain.

'Why did you do that?' I hissed, hands around the present Merlin's chained throat. I couldn't hurt him, of course. Leaving aside the fact that he was far too durable for me to scratch, the nature of his imprisonment made it so he couldn't be damaged or altered by forces from outside or inside Broceliande. 'And how?'

'You are asking the wrong questions, David.' The cambion smiled blandly, limp in my grip. 'That is, the simple ones. Don't you loathe people who ask questions with obvious answers? You want to berate or beat them bloody, and your more honest side has such interesting ide-'

My backhand turned his head, wiping the smile off his face. Hurt your pride, did I? Surprised you have any after your girlfriend turned your last BDSM session into permanent cockblocking.

'Just because you can hear my thoughts, it does not mean you should comment on them,' I said, my smile almost as full of forced calm as my voice. 'Answer me.'

Merlin let out a suffering sigh, exasperated at my, what, thick-headedness? 'Think, David! Think! I cannot do anything except scry the future and teleport myself in this state, and doing the second drags my prison along. I cannot harm people. My future self,' he spat the words in a way that made them sound absurd, like "flying pigs" or "nice surprises". 'If you want to use such hobbling terms, apparently won't be, going by that telekinetic pulse he used on your eyes. That is how he was able to affect you.'

'But that wasn't really your future self, was he' My hands lowered from his neck to his shirt collar. I knew everyone in the meeting could hear us, and if they weren't eavesdropping, or were listening but not intervening, they clearly saw no problem with my treatment of the mage. 'You-people like you and Vyrt, and your inhuman parents-don't perceive time linearly, nor do you live like us, do you? Was that you from the future truly different from the you I'm holding?'

'Considering I haven't blasted you off me,' Merlin said drily. 'Maybe a smidge.'

I stared into his lidless, flaming orbs for a few moments, eyes narrowed, then let go of his collar, shoving him away with a scoff. I caught his smirk as he stumbled, and put out a boot to trip him.

Petty? Yes. You could say I was the eye for an eye type.

'Why did you call me "Keeper"?' I asked after he got back to his feet. 'What am I keeping, or going to? Does it have anything to do with Mimir's sight?'

'You would rather ask about my friend's sight than use it to gain the answers you desire?' Merlin retorted, hands in his coat's pockets.

I didn't really give a damn about the fact he and Mimir had apparently been friends-with the dead god's possible motives before the Headhunt, and Merlin's stunt, I could see several things they had in common, though. Things like "useless arsehole who knows too much and does too little". 'You  just popped my eyes like fucking balloons for  trying, jackass,' I reminded him, my strigoi side stirring in the back of my mind with an anticipative chuckle. 'Are you going senile, or have you always been this stupid?'

'Do not cast mountains in glass houses, agent Silva,' Merlin said, all familiarity gone from his voice, replaced by coldness rather than the offended anger I had expended. 'I told you to use Mimir's sight-who mentioned the future? Besides you, so you could talk yourself into finding a reason to insult me?'

'You mean, another one?' I asked sarcastically, pointing at the blood around my healed eyes, a dark so red it was almost black. 'Are you saying I am "keeping" something in the present? Or that I did it in the past?'

'No, Silva.' The cambion sounded weary. 'I am saying that, if you look close enough at the now, you will see what you will Keep. But you must not look at the future. Not because of that, but because you cannot afford precognition past the current crisis...at the moment.' Merlin shook his head, frustrated at the way he was stumbling over words. 'My future self used the title he is-will be-accustomed to calling you by, in an attempt to both get your attention and taunt you with future knowledge. But he did not want you to look into the future, just like I do not.'

'Well, you've both done a bang-up job.' I applauded quietly a few times. 'Poor communication kills, you know?'

Our staring contest-I didn't know what more to tell the mage at the moment, and beating on him would have solved nothing; nor did he seem inclined to talk any more-was interrupted by Bedivere calling for us, and saying it was time to go to Faerie.

***

Neither Merlin nor the others spoke of our altercation, though I caught Shiftskin pursing his lips contemplatively when I or the cambion looked at him.

Mages are both the most common-two billions worldwide, a tenth of Earth' population before the evacuation- and some of the weakest supernaturals. Sure, iele, common Fae and ghouls who ate little were only a few million times stronger than baseline humans, and certain small species were actually weaker than them, but they were the exception, not the rule. Most mages could control matter in all its states, boost their bodies and minds, read those of others or move objects telekinetically; some could control spacetime too, like Mihai (one of the strongest civilian mages of my generation), or erase things from existence. But, compared to species who started at turning mountains to clouds of dust or steam, and only escalated from there (strigoi, vamps, weres, zmei, dragons...)  and who were mostly immune to esoteric effects, regardless of power, barring certain weaknesses, being able to see the future, blast tanks to shrapnel, throw around buildings and bend nature to your will starts looking pretty lame.

Not to mention that, while mana never ran out-mages were limited by how much they had, an amount that could increase through improvements of the body, mind or soul which, through synchrobisation, gave birth to mana-their physical and mental stamina was limited, which often proved a problem for those not adept at restoring themselves.

Even so, no one could deny mages were also, overall, the most  versatile supernaturals. Besides the magic all of them had access to, there were many rarer, or even unique types, like Liam Lloyd's ability to kill almost anything, from organisms to metaphors(I say almost, because Lloyd's power, not being holy, would do jack and shit to me or to a vampire; or, for that matter, a were, or an on-guard zmeu; again, blanket resistance).

Teleportation and portal creation were some of the more common "subtypes" of magic. Traveling was easy, as long as you had a vague idea of a location: its appearance, its name. Even if the appearance had changed since a mage got a description, they could still teleport there, or make a portal, if they wanted. Magic automatically adjusted to prevent telefragging, but mages preferred to be careful.

Travelling between realities wasn't any more challenging, because distance, whether finite or infinite, was not an obstacle to magic, which didn't travel. Even going to or "through" the aether, that realm that spanned the multiverse, separating its realities from each other and best equated to a wormhole made of mana and filled with dead agnostics, was possible.

Why, then, was multiversal travel uncommon? Why didn't we set off on a glorious crusade in the name of Mother Cosmos, and smite the savages of other universes, or grind them beneath our heels? Well, three reasons.

One, we had almost anything we want on our Earth, or in the wider universe, if we're feeling adventures. The appearance of magic, and supernaturals in general, hds solved a lot of problems mundane society, analysts claimed, would have still been struggling with. Pollution, global warming, natural disasters and overpopulation stopped being scary the moment Ion Gheorghescu down the street could develop magic and the ability to reshape the world, create pocket realities, or erase unwanted stuff from existence.

And, when you have two or so billion mages working together, or at least not against each other...well. People are lazy. If they're feeling content and safe, they'll most likely stay home. The rest, the daredevils (Not you, Murdock, you're cool; Christian bros, even though yer a filthy Cat'lick), either set off by themselves to seek thrills, or ended up in prison.

Two, most realities besides ours were either literally empty or really,  really inhospitable. Places where the monsters Vyrt had killed were about as impressive as earthworms were here. Colonising the empty ones, or taming the eldritch ones, ran back into the problem of laziness. Even that dustup on Mars had left a lot of people yawning and shelving colonisation of the Red Planet for the future. Admittedly, the godly cold war predating the Headhunt, and its aftermath, hadn't helped.

Third, and this had to do with our current endeavour, some realities, whether inhabited or not, were sealed off from the rest of the multiverse by more than just the aether. Wards, placed by gods, the most advanced species(there was was often overlap) or both, against invaders eldritch and mundane alike, stood around them like the Iron Curtain had towered over the tallest mountains in the USSR and its allies.

We didn't have the stomach to approach such heavily-defended universes. Maybe we would, in the future, extending a friendly hand. But, for the moment, we had our own problems.

While Faerie was indeed shielded and full of booby traps, not to mention defence mechanisms, the most challenging aspect of its defences was the glamour that spanned the realm. Which would have been useless against any member of our raiding party, between our natural or artificial resistances, but that hadn't been why we'd taken so long.

The Fae, probably the Seelie Court, as building things up went against the Unseelie's nature, had beefed up their realm's wards against extra-universal intrusions by a lot. Not enough to slow down New Camelot's mages by more than half a day, but that said more about them than the Fae, especially with Vyrt's wife Miranda having destruction magic backed up by a horrible temper, which was only encouraged by the Lady of the Lake, who had also helped with the breaching.

However, the fact we had started, never mind finished tearing down their walls had everyone walking up walls. Even the Seelie on their nicest day took an extremely dim view of unannounced visitors. Now, with both Courts mad, allied and seemingly in the throes of a Hunt?

Honestly, the fact we'd gotten this far without resistance was almost as baffling as the fact Ireland's emergency government had let us in the country, and even then only because we actually had an explanation for the Irish' stance.

After the Shattering, gods briefly descended to Earth to look into the countries of their past or current worshipper, resulting in things like Amaterasu incinerating the Japanese Royal Family and Anu proposing Gilgamesh as a ruler of a reunited Mesopotamia(negotiations that went nowhere for decades, and were on hold until the current crisis was resolved, as the First Hero was leading a strike force consisting of his people's descendants to put down would-be invaders before they could cross the aether into our reality).

The Tuatha de Danaan took one look at Ireland, then at Britain, and more or less went "Welp. You two need separation and long, long-distance reconciliation". The Brits went home, because they couldn't do anything else at the time, and the reconciliation has resulted in a chilly acknowledgement of each other's existence, but no wars. That was something.

Nevertheless, the Irish weren't keen on Brits traipsing through their country for any reason. Other foreigners were sometimes fine, sometimes not; the reason we had gotten through was because the Druid Matriarch had been encouraged by the Dagda, Morrigan and Lugh to speed our passage, and had in turn leaned on the Irish Minister of Defence, who had agreed not to have the Emerald Isle's runic walls or drone defence network blast us to nothing from afar.

Vyrt and Vykt had remained at the Roundhouse, along with Theo and a couple hundred Knights, because there was no way something nasty would miss their absence, let alone do nothing. Bedivere had been chosen to lead the mission after a short argument between him, Sam, Dust Devil and Brazillion, who had deferred to the Grandmaster's experience, preferring to use their greater power to crush what he couldn't out-think.

'We will wait here until you return, Grandmaster.' Vyrt's wife, Miranda, was half a head shorter than me, but more muscular, with dark skin and short, curly raven hair. I only saw this for a few seconds, then her helmet flowed back into place, hiding the skintight mana forcefield from view. She was a bonfire amongst the candles of her subordinate mages, and each of them felt like a walking nuke just based on mana, not taking their armour into account.

'Hold the gate open, and prepare another expedition should you fail.' Whether to rescue or avenge us remained to be seen. That was probably the second, unspoken reason Vyrt had stayed at the Roundhouse. Four fifths of the London Chapter-eight hundred Knights-had followed the Grandmaster, as had a hundred fifty thousand Knights gathered from the other Chapter across Britain. Less than half of the organisation's strength, but Bedivere hated putting all his eggs into one basket, and leaving the country defenceless was inconceivable. We would make do with the power at our disposal.

The only thing I could think of as we walked through the portal on top of Newgrange's grass-covered roof, though, was that I really hoped nothing would happen to damage the ancient burial site. It was older than the pyramids, and proof people built things to last back in the day.

Probably not enough to bear our combined weight, though, which is why we didn't risk it, and instead entered in groups, with Sam and the FREAKSHOW agents taking point, followed by countless ten-Knight squads, Bedivere, with Brazillion, Szabo and the Fivefold acting as extra bodyguards in the middle, followed by more Knights, and Dharma and I bringing up the rear. So I could make the most of my sight, I suppose, though I wasn't sure what the old Indian specialised in. Not because his powers were shrouded in mystery, but because they were extremely versatile.

Dharma could gain new abilities depending who he helped, or who trued to harm him. Helping someone keep warm decades ago had given him pyrokynesis. An attempt at poisoning had resulted in the wannabe assassin rotting into sludge. And so on. In Bedivere's place, I'd have put him in the front or middle, but it wasn't my place.

I was still a probationary agent. After the first three years in ARC, I  should have been made a full agent, given access to the organisation's forums, full archives(well, the parts open to the grunts) and threat-assessment scale, but the Headhunt had resulted in extended probation, because people now wanted to get a feel of my new powers and see if my personality had changed.

Faerie was infinite in size, but seemed fairly limited in topography. Plains and lakes leading to forest leading to mountains repeated every sixty kilometres (a distance any of us could cover in a fraction of a second, while taking it slow), but there seemed to be no deserts, no tundras, no volcanoes or jungles.

Even after Szabo took away at lightspeed and returned after an hour, claiming this had to be the biggest, blandest national park he'd ever been to: over a billion kilometres of nothing but wilderness.

'Right, that tears it,' Sam rumbled in a voice like a lion's roar, so he could be heard by everyone, adjusting his cloak's left side. 'Silva, look for the nearest Fae settlement or outpost. Fivefold, find its weak point.'

We both nodded, though I snuck a curious glance at the American agents. I doubted Sam just wanted her opinion on Fae defences. More likely, we were about to witness one of her demons' power in action.

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I closed my eyes, forced a deep breath into my unmoving lungs-entirely unnecessary, but a good way to focus-and opened them again.

My sight swept across the landscape far faster than light, and realised it was getting nowhere after a few microseconds. Everything was the same, like a house of mirrors, or a network of trenches. Perhaps the Fae's way to discourage us from scouting while they hid and prepared themselves.

My sight then lowered, before moving through the ground, perception getting faster and faster as trillions of kilometres of loamy soil were analysed in seconds, only to reveal nothing.

'Stop looking lower,' a soft, deep voice said to my left year, which meant Dharma was standing on his tiptoes, or floating. 'I feel you are wasting your time.'

I didn't say anything, not wanting to risk breaking my focus, but my inquisitive grunt was enough for him to understand what I meant.

'One of my powers,' the little man said. 'Reveals when something is a good idea.'

I grunted again. Suggestions?

'Stop where you are,' Dharma replied. 'Move forward for, hmm...a dozen billion klicks.'

I did as told, but saw nothing except for earthworms, moles, and bronze statues of Fae in triumphant poses, in both armour and robes, which must have been old, but looked pristine, despite how long they must have have been buried.

'There! Stop there!' Dharma gripped my right shoulder excitedly, pulverising my upper torso. I healed so fast my cross was still hanging in midair, around the cloud of cold blood that had been and quickly turned back into my neck, giving the Indian a sidelong deadpan look.

He grinned back, revealing teeth whiter than his chest-length beard. 'I only did that because I knew you could take it. Come now, David. Let an old man have his joys.'

'You ruined my shirt,' I complained without any real heat, looking at the bloody shreds on the ground. The yamadium weave was just as durable as my body, which said a lot about Dharma in his excitable moments.

'That,' Dharma held up a finger. 'Is also necessary for the mission. Now, listen. Stop looking where you are. Have you...? Good. Now, turn left and keep going.'

'Why don't you lead us there yourself?' I muttered, but nevertheless followed his advice.

After a few minutes, I saw a honeycombed structure made of cold iron, built into the ground, as Fae didn't need air, covered in runes that had never been used by mankind. The slits in the hexagon's walls were big enough to accommodate a few ordinary Fae, or one of the bigger ones, like a nuckelavee.

This must have been a frontier prison. There were only a dozen billion slits in the walls surrounding some sort of courtyard, and even the Seelie Court numbered nearly five thousand times that, let alone the much more numerous Unseelie or unaligned Fae. The Fright Before Christmas had seen the appearance of a few billion Unseelie on Earth, and such small forces, by their standards, were a sign of bizarre restraint from the chaotic Fae.

And where were the guards? Each cell was full, but unbarred and unguarded.

'Good find, Silva,' Sam said after I described the apparent prison. 'We'll use it to get their attention. Threaten to kill the prisoners. If this turns out to be a small prison in bumfuck nowhere, we'll carry on after we're done, find another place, and repeat until we bring them to the table.'

'What if they call our bluff, sir?' I asked, unsure how to feel about his plan. If these guys were wretched enough, by Fae standards, to be imprisoned underground, they  probably deserved death, but...

Twelve billion. By hand?

'Bluff...? Oh, right. Like we called their "bluff" to raze every settlement on Earth. Well, we'll kill them, obviously.'

The wendigo nodded to the Knights, who covered their weapons with a layer of iron. Those wielding guns adjusted them on their shoulders, or where they were wardbound to their armoured thighs, and I saw Dust Devil unholster his revolvers and spin their barrels once, twice, with an empty-eyed grin on his face.

Before we could tear the ground open and descend into the prison, though, it tore open by itself.

The tallest mountain in the Solar System is Olympus Mons, at twenty-five kilometres. Next to the mountains that ripped themselves free of Fairie's ground, reshaping themselves into bulky humanoid shapes, like Sofia's golem on steroids, it would have looked like a hill, not even coming up their ankles. The walking mountains were over four hundred kilometres tall, as tall as Surtr.

Next to the giants of white rock covered in forests, shapes covered in false muscles formed from the soil itself rose. These golems were covered in city-sized patches of moss, and veins of ore ran through their bodies, giving the impression of a flayed human made of dirt.

And they moved almost as fast as me. But that was a given. Around two hundred-fifty thousand times as tall as a human, they also needed to move as many times as fast to look like they were running at 'normal' speed.

Which meant that, when I flew to clash fists with twenty-six trillion tons of rock, I did so at thirty-six hundred times the speed of sound.

And was unceremoniously splattered.

See, that much weight moving that fast is enough to give the Earth a pretty brutal makeover, and while I was more durable than most things on the planet, I wasn't durable enough to take a punch that would have razed its surface or wrecked the moon.

I healed while my cross, preserved by the power pops had woven into it, was flailing wildly from the speed of my flying remains. The golem had punched me the equivalent of a few Earths away, which meant it was beyond my sight, but I could still sense the furnace-like source of mana animating it, even without Mimir's perception.

It took me nearly a minute to fly back, time I used to tap into Faerie's atmosphere, bending it to my will. Countless lightning bolts arched down from cloudless skies, stopped in midair by my mental command, before wrapping around me like armour. They say lightning never strikes twice, and that's true: no strigoi would be content with so little.

The golem that had punched me away had gotten into a fight with what looked like some wereinsect Knight, given the oval, armoured wings rising from their back and the extra arms sprouting from their abdomen.

The Knight was spinning six broadswords, their modified feet allowing for more gripping appendages, and avoiding the golem's punches at such speeds, they disappeared from my sight with every moment, visible only in the fractions of a microsecond they hovered in place to swing at the golem, splitting hundreds of kilometres of rock with every strike, sending bulky arms and bisected torsos flying, but the giant healed almost as fast as it was slashed apart.

I could only imagine how the fight looked from its perspective, if it even had one. The golem was not only fast, it also had extremely keen senses, or the equivalent of tracking systems, given how it had hit me with far more precision than I'd have been able to punch a microbe flying as fast as I moved.

The insect knight caught my gesture to move aside, blurring out of sight and leaving my lightning-wreathed form alone with the golem. Let's see if it could heal after being reduced to st-

A stream of stone, thousands of kilometres long and dozens wide, like an onrushing ocean of granite, flew at me from the golem's outstretched fists, filling my sight. Grinning under a mask of lightning, I flew on, and the jet of rock became vapour at the contact with my lightning construct.

I covered the distance to the golem in seconds, burning through the rock, then smashing a glowing, smoking crater through its chest and out of its back. The giant didn't stumble, or slow down when it turned to crush me, but it didn't heal, either.

Laughing in my head, as I was moving a few thousand times too fast for the real thing, I took the lightning armour off me like it was a cloak, reshaping it into a crackling, supercharged white bolt, then hurled it at the golem.

What do you get when about twenty-five trillion tons of rock are rapidly vapourised by a lightning bolt? You get a blast that would have ruined a lot of days back on Earth. The closest comparison would be have been the Permian Extinction Event, given the immense plume of superheated smoke that filled the landscape to the horizon and far beyond, but even the Siberian Traps' eruption paled in terms of sheer power.

The insect knight suddenly appeared next to me, giving me a thankful, appreciative nod.

'Huh. I guess I can see what the buzz is all about,' she said, a voice that would have been smooth underlined by a crackling sound, like static.

'That pun was pretty fly,' I grinned at the groan. 'By any chance, would you happen to bee a-'

'I'm a dragonfly,' she said, spinning her swords again as she looked for another target. 'And no, that doesn't mean I spit flaming mucus.'

She was gone, then reappeared on an earth golem, before I could tell her I hadn't even thought about that.

As I gathered bolts from clear skies around me once more, I took a look at how the others were doing.

The Knights, having realised there was no point in dicing or shattering the golems, had drawn back, moving just as fast as me, and raised guns with glowing barrels. Bedivere stood in the middle of one such squad, holding but not lifting an unadorned, simple-looking spear.

But then, Rongomyniad didn't need frills.

Hundreds, then thousands of coruscating beams flew from the guns, but not at the golems, instead meeting in midair and forming pulsing, city-sized spheres. They then opened up like blooming flowers, thick energy beams flying at the golems faster than I could see and blasting dozens to steam.

There were still hundreds left, but, shit-the Knights had Power Rangers team attacks? What the hell was I training for!?

Szabo flitted around a rock golem faster than it could react, a silent laugh on his lips, blurring hundreds of kilometres away whenever it was a hair's breadth from touching him. After every missed hit, the strigoi then hovered in place long enough to meet an Earth-razing punch, and kick the offending arm to pieces.

Eventually, he got bored. But, rather than rip off my lightning trick, Szabo opened his fanged mouth wide, draining the golem's animating energy into him, and causing the inert construct to tumble to the ground with an earth-shattering fall.

The Fivefold wasn't as fast as him, but she didn't need to be, either. Her movements as she tracked her golem were just as fast as mine, but, rather than dodge, she simply disappeared from the path of its stomping feet and crushing fists, reappearing beyond its reach. To Mimir's sight, it looked like she was dropping in and out of reality, pushed away and pulled back in by a shrouded, cloaked demon.

After getting its measure, the Fivefold nodded to herself, and the golem's mana its body, before gathering in a shimmering, colourless sphere in front of the hellbound, who snuffed it out with a touch.

Dharma stopped forward, bending one leg and extending one arm, palm out. A wave of not-force rushed out, leaving a milky-white emptiness as it erased everything in its path, finishing with the golem, before looping back to the caster, sealing the hole in reality along the way.

I saw Dust Devil shake his head at the tensing Brazillion and the deceptively relaxed-looking Randy. The Brazilian mage mouthed an annoyed curse about glory hounds, while Randy grinned, sticking his hands in his pockets and rocking on his heels. Then, the gunslinger's body seemed not to move.

The next instant, a hundred fifty golems became black silhouettes, like giant nuclear shadows, before fading. Dust Devil spun his guns to disperse the smoke, before holstering them once more.

Bedivere glanced at us, then the remaining hundred-plus golems, raised his dead king's spear, and threw it.

Rongomyniad flew faster than I could see, passing through the golems without damaging them, or tampering with their mana. Even so, the constructs settled back on or in the ground, assuming their natural shapes once more. Mana still flowed through them, trying to reshape them into the prison's guardians, but failing.

'Now,' the Grandmaster said, turning to Shiftskin and catching the spear that flew at him from behind, so fast its passage distorted light, without looking. 'Your idea, Samuel.'

***

It turned out we didn't need to perform a mass execution whose body count would have outstripped any war on Earth's. Our descent into the prison triggered some sort of aetheric silent alarm, and before long, a beleaguered, but seemingly sane Oberon was leading us to his palace, flanked by a host of trillions of Fae and other, less identifiable supernaturals.

' "Count" Coldhold is a sham, unloved and disrespected,' the Seelie King explained, the colours of his crystal armour changing as often as his appearance. 'The people he led to your world during this so-called Fright Before...Yule? What  are you calling it nowadays?'

'Don't change the subject,' Sam warned from his left, something making his cloak bulge and shift. 'Why should we believe you didn't authorise this attack, or know about it?'

Oberon sighed. 'This is  not about plausible deniability, Two-Mantled Lamb. Please, do not attribute to evil what is born of ignorance. Do you see these?' Oberon gestured at the crucified bodies lining the paths leading to the Seelie capital.

They were not human, or any supernatural or alien I recognised. Not reptilians, or Grey One's people. They weren't the compact, beetle-like citizens of the Honoured Kratocracy, either, nor the ever-shifting forms of the Unity Stellar.

'What of them?' Bedivere asked, using Rongomyniad like a walking stick.

'You would not believe how rotten some civilisations can become, young knight...or, perhaps not. I always thought your kind should have thinned the herd around that Industrial Revolution of yours. No matter.' Oberon shook his head, shifting eyes becoming black and steely. 'My darker kind long to bring down any organised nation. Titania and I thought it was time to bury the hatchet, even help them channel their impulses into something good, and they agreed! This purge of the wicked-you will notice the multiverse is a much cleaner place, should you care to check- was their way of sealing our deal. Alas...while we were doing that, the force left to guard the hearths-misfits and weaklings, led by a joke of a Count we shouldn't have relied on, even for this-slipped their leash, and fell upon Earth.'

I could see absolutely no hesitation or agitation from the Seelie, nor any metaphysical indicators that he was lying-but that only meant Oberon thought he was saying the truth, not that he was. That, or he just was better at spinning lies than I was at seeing through them.

'That's awfully convenient, Yer Majesty,' Dust Devil grunted around his toothpick, a few paces between them. 'Did ya happen to find these acceptable targets by yerselves?'

'Oh, no!' Oberon was so pleased with his exploits that he showed no irritation at the American's tone, unlike his subjects. 'A god showed them to us! He-'

'One of the Tuatha de Danaan?' Bedivere asked, eyes narrowed.

'No. And do not interrupt me, knight, or I may have to get cross with you,' the Fae warned coldly. 'A god from a colder, bleaker realm. He found his way here after the Headhunt, scared and scarred, and pointed out those deserving destruction, before retreating into a slumber. Apparently, he was being chased at the time, so he channeled his considerable power into hiding himself.'

'Very altruistic, this runaway,' Sam remarked as Oberon's palace crested the horizon.

'Indeed! We were as shocked as we were pleased by Chernobog's generosity!' Oberon smiled brightly.