Day 11 of Midwinter, Midday

Heart-shaped Pool, Midlands

Annwn

The group wasn’t overly cruel in the pace they traveled. The horse I was tied to trotted at a speed that required me to jog, but not full-out sprint.

No one spoke to me along the way, and I didn’t recognize any of these changelings or fairies from my previous trip to the Pool ten days earlier. But the scenery was gorgeous. Everything around the Pool was green and teeming with life. We passed a massive tower about halfway from the orchard to the camp. It looked to be abandoned but the foundation still appeared solid.

After a few hours, we arrived at the base camp south of the Pool. I was paraded to an open command area. There were no tarps or walls set up to shelter the tables from the wind and rain. But there was no sign of bad weather in the sky. Milling about between tables littered with papers and what looked to be large chess pieces was a regal man. He wore no armor and sported what I would call a well-manicured, hipster beard that had wisps of red in it. He had a scar below his right eye. My first impression, just based on his expression, was that he was annoyed by my presence.

“I thought my brother was clear the last time you were here.” The man didn’t bother to make eye contact as he spoke. “There are none, save the reborn members of my father’s family, that are allowed in the Pool.”

I didn’t reply. People that acted like this activated a very dark part of my personality. It was my passive-aggressive way of making him look at me, which he eventually did.

“Are you deaf?” He eyed me disdainfully, clearly irritated.

I looked right into his eyes when I spoke. “I heard you just fine. I was waiting to get your full attention.” That made the man even more upset. He slammed the chess piece he was holding onto the table, disrupting several others. Looking at it more closely, I could see it wasn’t a game piece at all. He had been moving tokens around the map on the table. Before he knocked them over, several pieces had been near a port town to the northwest.

He glared. “You have some nerve talking to me like that.”

“I don’t even know who you are,” I snapped back. “But your ridiculous beard makes me think you might be late to your CrossFit class.”

He looked equally enraged and confused. I could see the soldiers around me, who had just been trying not to laugh, looking back and forth to each other with similar looks of confusion.

This guy had to be a son of King Nuada. He had just referenced his father’s family being able to swim in the pool, presumedly after a genesis or regenesis. I thought back to the last time I was at the camp. Morias had talked about Tadg’s brothers. I couldn’t quite remember their names.

I said my next words loud enough for everyone to hear. “You have outdated information, I’m afraid.” I had been around the noble types long enough now to know how to lay it on thick. “I have just come from Hy-Brasil, having been killed defending Gorias. My time in the Pool, this morrow, was because of my genesis there.”

You could tell that he did not know how to deal with this information. It appeared that my pronouncement had thrown a wrench into his plans.

“I do not believe you.”

My hands and wrists flared with blue light, burning the binds away. The soldiers behind me drew their weapons and the Ellyllon came to circle overhead, leveling various bows and crossbows at me.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

I kept speaking in the same flowery tone. “If I was lying, would I have a boon that granted me this sort of magic?”

“You could,” he said matter-of-factly.

“Really?” I said, genuinely caught off guard. Well, chet… there goes my argument. That will teach me to make an argument about something I only barely understood.

He had regained his composure at my misstep, and probably because he had a whole company around him that was prepared to dispatch me at his command. “Here is what is going to happen now. You will go with these men to a cell that we have waiting for you on the edge of our camp. There, you will await judgment.”

“From who?” I asked, figuring that I already knew the answer. “Do you have to check in with Daddy?” I thought I heard one of the soldiers snicker from somewhere in the back of their ranks. The commander looked furious. For a second, I think he actually considered having his soldiers begin to cut me into little pieces, but he refrained.

“You will go with them now, or you will save me the time of having to check in with ‘daddy’ because there will be one less liar in Annwn.”

I rolled my eyes at him and allowed myself to be marched toward my cell. The soldiers didn’t bother putting any other bindings on my wrists. I guess maybe they figured I would just break out again. One guard attempted to manhandle me a bit, but I simply stopped moving until he let go of me. He didn’t have the strength to move me.

Eventually, I was left alone in my cell. It reminded me of a large wine barrel laid on its side. One of the flat sections of the barrel had a door that I could see out. There were bars on the door, but no glass or screen to hinder my view from the cell.

The opening was pointed south, to the very path we had used in our retreat during Tadg’s battle with the Fomorians. I could see the plains stretching beyond. Sporadic trees littered the ground, and high up in one of the trees, I saw the Raven.

I sat down on one of the wood planks that I suspected would serve as my bed later in the evening. Two simple planks ran the length of the barrel, with a small walkway between them leading to the door. I got out the dagger that I had so carefully stashed.

It really wasn’t a well-made weapon. It was scratched and rusty in spots. I began to turn the blade over to collect more information from my newfound encyclopedic brain. I almost dropped it when The Dagda’s voice broke the silence.

Your domain classification Battlesmith allows you the ability to modify this weapon with little or no equipment. This blade is a mundane dagger. Would you like to REPAIR or SHARPEN this blade?

I thought about it for a moment and mentally selected sharpen. The hand holding the dagger began to glow with a greenish light and the edges of the blade began to heat up from the magic being channeled into it. I could feel the grip beginning to warm with the transfer of magic and watched in shock as it began to smoke in my palm. Surprised, I dropped the blade and it clattered to the floor with a loud noise.

I waited. No guard came to the door to check on me. I looked down at the dagger. The edges were no longer glowing, but they had burned the outline of the dagger into the floor where it had landed. I examined the now cool weapon. The edges were pristine and straight. I wondered just how sharp I had made it.

I looked across from me and saw the second set of wooden bed planks. My eyes flicked between the dagger and the wood. I stabbed the dagger into a knot at the top of the plank bed and felt the blade sink in easily. Pushing down a little harder, the blade sank to the crossguard. I peered under the plank and saw the tip of the blade sticking out through the bottom.

I had no experience with whittling, but the ease with which the blade had cut into the wood felt very rewarding. I began to carve, only occasionally having to infuse the weapon with more magic to resharpen the blades. A few times, I energized the blades as I carved, finding it gave the wood a darker, burnt hue.

I whiled away a few hours on the carving. At some point, the sun began to set. I thought I would have to use my Control Energy boon to light up my cell, but my Dark Vision boon took over and allowed me to continue working until I was satisfied with the finished product.

“What is that?” came a familiar voice at the door. I had worked well longer on my wooden sculpture than I had planned. “It looks like… an anus?” I looked up to see Tadg standing at my cell door, holding a ring of keys.

“Hey!” I said, standing up and stretching my stiff muscles. “It’s the Eye of Sauron.”

“Who?”

I looked back at the carved wood again before responding. “Sauron! The lord of the one ring?”

“He certainly is,” Tadg said, smiling and unlocking the door. “The last time I saw you was in Gorias. I can’t wait to hear how you ended up in the Pool...again.”

I sighed. This was going to be a long night.