Day 9 of Midwinter, Nightfall

In the Wild, Emain Ablach

Annwn

We left before the rest of the camp was even stirring. It was the darkest part of the night, but I felt okay about things with my trusty Fíadan with me. Nemain understood that I needed to take this small detour. She told me she would share my plans with the others. It was the perfect time to go on this errand because there was no way in all hell that I would be going back to sleep anytime soon.

The Dagda had told me that the Mark of the Bodach would only get worse. He said that each time I went to sleep the number of Bodach sent to claim me would continue to increase. I apologized for telling him that I didn’t hear the voices back on Ériu. I had felt stupid for having gotten tangled up in another Otherworldly mess (again). So I lied. I felt bad about it now, even after he assured me he had known all along.

The Dagda hadn’t come with us on this little side quest. It would be a quick in-and-out sort of trip, and who better to keep me moving fast than Fí?

“You know, you move slower than most coblynau I’ve seen, and that’s saying something. They are only about this tall.” She gestured near her knee, a move that I barely caught as Efa and I rode hard across uneven, dark terrain.

“What’s a coblynau?” I tried to ask between the mare’s strides.

“Remember Dobby from Harry Potter?”

“How do you know about Dobby?” I asked, truly perplexed by this conversation.

“Don’t answer the farthing question with a question! Did you read the books or not?” She had been flying beside me but came even closer to Efa to chastise me.

“No.”

She shook her head at me in exasperation. “He had big eyes, big ears, and a high-pitched voice.” She paused at that before continuing. “Almost makes me wonder if J.K. Rowling spent some time here in Annwn… ANYWAY, picture Dobby in a little miner’s uniform.”

“So, like a gnome?”

She seemed irritated by my words but must have decided that my point was valid because she shrugged, and then flew up ahead.

We had been riding for an hour or two. It was hard to tell without the sun to guide us, but I had told Fí we needed to go south, so south is where I assumed she’d taken us. We had a pit stop to make before changing directions and heading west to meet up with the army outside of Flamebright.

“I see it up ahead,” Fíadan called out, slowing her pace. Efa instinctively slowed her pace to match that of the fairy. I had only been to this place once before, and I had been coming from a different direction.

The other major difference was that the last time I had Ruadan with me. Back then, only a few days ago, I had been led around like a puppy… or at least it felt like it now. This time, I had a different snarky friend with me, but one I knew I could trust. Poor Roo. How did he end up in league with the Fomorians? Worse, would I have to face him when we went to liberate Flamebright?

“Hey! Snap out of it!” Fí said as I came to the top of the hill. We looked down into the valley and at the red lake at the very bottom. The lake, Lough Dearg, actually looked less red since I’d been here last. I suppose losing the giant worm-sized heater would do wonders for reducing the algae problem.

“I’m okay,” I said as I began to ride slowly down the hill.

“Are you, though?”

“I was thinking about Ruadan.”

Stolen novel; please report.

Fíadan fluttered in front of me now, flying with her back to the lake. “What happened when I left to find The Dagda?”

“Roo took me into the wild to get more experience. I fought bandits and snake monsters. I even fought a mist monster. Anyway, Roo somehow made a copy of himself and led Cai and Tethra to our position here at Lough Dearg.”

“Yeah, he does that…” she said as if nothing about Ruadan would surprise her. “But I can’t believe he would allow his home to be overtaken by the Fomorians.”

“I’m having a hard time with that, too,” I admitted.

Fí was quiet for a while. She turned to survey the large openings that the oilliphéist had created. “So what’s your plan here at the lake?”

“I’m going to see if Monty is here. It’s where I would have come if I were him. Ériu told me that oilliphéists can sniff out nearby lairs. Being that this one is now abandoned…” I let that thought just hang there.

“I can’t believe you ended up with a pet oilliphéist.”

“He isn’t a pet,” I said. “He’s… my bound minion, and I shouldn’t have just left him.”

“You do have a tendency to do that…”

“Hey!” I said, startling Efa with my tone. “You should talk. You didn’t even say goodbye when you left Flamebright.”

She considered that, and in what I guessed was a rare moment, she apologized. “I’m sorry about that. All I could think about was if I found him quickly, I could…”

I knew where she was going with this, so I finished her thought. “Go kill Cai sooner?”

She smiled at me. “Ya got me pegged, Shorty.”

We reached the campsite where Ruadan and I had nursed our wounds after the oilliphéist battle. Of course, this was also where I had met my brother for the first time. We left the horses there and attempted the slow sideways climb into the lair. If it were possible, it smelled even worse than before… the rotting carcass, I suspected.

We made it all the way into the central lair. This time, I didn’t need to use any light. I could see perfectly fine in the pitch black of the cave. The corpse of the giant oilliphéist still lay there, though there were definitely chunks missing from the body.

My thoughts turned inward, and I tried a new trick that The Dagda had shown me, back at camp. It was a way to get part of the power rank notification, simply by concentrating on the part I wanted. The Dagda’s voice spoke inside my mind.

You have one bound minion:

Monty, oilliphéist

“He’s here!” I said to the fairy, who I assumed also had some sort of Dark Vision boon. Or maybe she had a fairy trait that allowed her to see in the dark?

“How do you know?” she asked, edging closer to the monster’s body.

“The last time I leveled, the notification told me he was out of range. This time, I didn’t get that message.” I looked around again and decided to call out. “Monty!”

“How big is Monty?” Fíadan asked. I could see her hand hovering not far from the handle of Swish.

“He’s not going to attack us if that is what you think.”

“I’ve never been in an oilliphéist lair before—and by the way, there is a reason for that—but every instinct in my body right now tells me this place is unsafe.”

I ignored her. I kept looking for the little serpent creature that had become the proverbial devil on my shoulder when I was without a friend.

“Monty, I’m sorry.” My voice echoed off the walls. “I didn’t know I would be leaving that night. And when I was offered a way home, I took it, without thinking about my friends.” Fíadan frowned, showing me that she too was hurt by this story, even after the fact. It was true. I had left everyone.

Nothing moved in the cave. Fíadan found the spot where I had wrestled the small bone from the skull. That bone had been the vessel containing the little wyrmling. “I wonder how big he is now?” Fí said aloud. “Does he know that you killed his parent?”

Seriously? I shot Fí a look, trying to telegraph “What the hell?” then turned to face the room again.

“We never really talked about where we found your bone… egg… thing.” I wondered how much I should tell him. However, I had determined lying or withholding information from my friends was not a road I wanted to go any further down. “We came here to fight your mother. She had poisoned this lake, and my friend Ruadan thought it would be a good experience for me… I killed your mother.”

“What are you doing?” Fí hissed. “I thought you were trying to get him back? I don’t think this little speech of yours is going to achieve that goal.”

“Shhhh,” I half-screeched to her.

“Also, I don’t think they require two parents to reproduce… so calling him a ‘he’ and his parent a ‘mother’ is probably inaccurate.”

I just shook my head at Fíadan and shared the last thing on my mind. “If you stay here, please be careful. You will get big, like your mother… and someone will come looking for you too. And I won’t be here to protect you.”

My voice cracked at this, so I stopped talking. Nothing moved in the cavern, though I was certain he was listening. All I could hear was the small lapping of waves from the lake upon the beach of the lair. Occasionally a rock would fall into the water along the tunnel. Monty clearly didn’t want to be my friend or minion. “I’m sorry,” I said under my breath. I focused on the minion part of my notifications and exhaled before executing the mental energy to make the change.

Minion Released. You have no bound or unbound minions.

Then Fíadan and I turned and exited Monty’s lair. We headed west and left the red water of Lough Dearg behind us.