Light & Dark 14(2)
Aug. 12th, 2004 11:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sparkindarknessand the second part. To be honest, I didn't cut these apart very well, they should have been kept as one text... but that would have been excessively long.
Sitharensor strode forwards, bending to touch each guard in turn. They were cold, incredibly cold. But amazingly alive, their breathing was shallow, their heart beat weak, but they lived. Even in the few seconds Sitharensor was touching him he felt heat beginning to come back to the human’s body. He looked up at Ilatheril curiously.
“They’re young. They’re healthy. They can spare a little life force.”
Sitharensor grimaced, standing up form the unconscious forms and fighting the urge to wipe his hand, as if he’d touched something unclean. “I thought you were unschooled, Ilatheril. I have heard of the darkness that hungers, the night that thirsts. It is not a simple spell, an easily spell, or a spell for an amateur.”
“Why, that sounds like an accusation. May I offer a rebuttal? What you know about Unseelie ‘dark’ magic can be written on the back of a postage stamp.”
“Which in turn makes it a positive encyclopaedia compared to your less than extensive knowledge concerning magic of any shade.”
“So like a Seelie, easier to live in a fantasy world than deal with the world around you. Speaking of which, I take it the reason why we aren’t hearing sirens is because all those nice people out there aren’t seeing me decking coppers with black magic?”
Sitharensor glanced through his own extended glamour coat, lips tightening in distaste where the mask curled and burned slightly round the edges, a faint haze. There was too much iron around here for pure magic. “Of course. Now tell me about the darkness that hungers.”
“Knew I’d corrupt you. It isn’t a spell, it’s a summons, almost a possession. Don’t ask me what is summoned or where from because I don’t know and wouldn’t tell a Seelie even if I did. You call as much as you need or can handle. If you only want a little, it doesn’t take much power, skill or even knowledge. Some non-Sidhe can actually do it.”
“I have never heard of that... do the freedom obsessed Unseelie also keep their people ignorant?”
“Yes, actually, but you knew that. The Seelie don’t know about - what a shock, Seelie ignorance! Because the amount of darkness I can call - or the amount that any ‘lesser’ fae can summon is negligible. What I just did to them humans will cause a slight chill to fae. At best.”
Sitharensor looked down at the men. “A slight chill? Do be sure to avoid medicine as a career path. Your talent for understatement would have the terminally ill as moderately unwell.”
“A human has no glamour, and precious little magical protection. Most of them. Unlike humans. Also, you ever tried to eat the life force of an immortal? Better have a big appetite or you’re going to be full and bloated before they’re even dizzy.”
“Well, perhaps it is time to see what these gentleman’s life force has bought us.” The secure doors swung open at the slightest touch... aided by just a brush of magic. Sitharensor strode through into the foyer... and froze. Inside an iron tower... a temple to the death of dreams.
Ilatheril turned and looked in surprise at the Seelie. “Why are you shocked? I though this is were the Seelie held all their power? Government and business and industry and all that stuff?”
“How elegantly you sum up our domains. But yes, all this stuff where the Seelie hold our strength.” Sitharensor didn’t look very happy about it.
“Thought so. Without it you’d never have won the war. So if this is all yours, why the grief? Or was it just all a creation so you can do the tragic angst thing you do so well? Ode to a skyscraper? See how the stock market falls? If I could compare you to a payday?”
“Please cease your attempts at verse, muses around the world scream in pain at their echoes. This is something I will change... the Seelie court seems to have spent too many years, too many decades, centuries even, accumulating power and influence under the illusion of our ideals while at the same time our ideals become shells of what they once were.”
“You mean the Seelie court’s being compromising it’s values!? Oh, alas, all this time just a mask? How could anyone have known that?! Oh wait, the Unseelie, who’ve been saying the same thing for millennia! Ok, this has been a few years in the making but, ‘I told you so!’”
Sitharensor stopped his dazed gaze towards the ceiling and turn to the Unseelie in a blur, his magic prickling across Ilatheril’s skin and causing even the humans who were advancing on them from the reception desk and security station to freeze in surprise. The Seelie’s intense violet eyes burned through his glamour into Ilatheril. “There are limits, Ilatheril! Even for the Unseelie, even for my husband, there are limits!” The Sidhe’s voice hissed, his rage held back by a minor thread of self control.
“Limits, Sith?” Ilatheril’s tone was light, but had an edge that could cut glass. “Limits are a Seelie thing, Sith. Remember? One of your empty laws you play lip service too while doing what you want - one of your pretty little lies.” Sitharensor stiffened, his hands jerking towards Ilatheril while his power raised higher. “You precious values that you hold to, that you try and force on all around you, are so easily wiggled round and cast aside when they’re inconvenient. Tell me, Sith, what was it? The Seelie Court‘s, the court that esteems love, hatred of the Unseelie that lead you to cast aside your values? Or was it your compassionless ambition for dominion that drove you to it? C’mon, which? While the Unseelie held true to what we believed in, what was it that lead the shining court to abandon theirs?”
Sitharensor was shuddering now, rage dancing in his eyes. His control held by a thread. His glamour flickering. His voice, when it finally came, was pressed and hard, heated by rage and weighed down by grief. “Despair! Despair, Unseelie! Our values were dying - and ye gods, we killed them to save them! The world was dying, we were dying, the Sidhe were dying - we still are! Our leaders were deaf, content to mope and mourn and dream of times past. War was coming - we did what we thought we must to preserve what little we had left.” He dropped to his knees. “It was a mistake. A mistake we will ever regret. A mistake that I must fix.”
“The Seelie court made a mistake?” Ilatheril hissed. “Or is it just that the Seelie court is a mistake?”
Sitharensor’s glamour shattered. The humans’ knees bucked as they fell prostate, wide, awe filled eyes, averted from the glory they could hardly perceive. “Mistake?! Oh, how easy it is for you Unseelie! How easy it is to be Unseelie - you just have to be. You never strive. Never try. Never raise your eyes higher. We reach eternally for perfection - and you complain that we cannot achieve it? You, who never even tries?”
Ilatheril opened his mouth, before looking over the stunned humans and closing it again. “Ok, we disagree, yeah, we’ll fight this out later - but a better time and place, right?”
Sitharensor took a deep shuddering breath, fighting for control. His burning violet eyes turned to the humans. He lashed out, magic hammering into their minds. A dozen humans had gathered. All of them collapsed.
Ilatheril grinned, “and you accuse me of lack of subtlety?”
Sitharensor pulled himself unsteadily to his feet, returning the smile weakly. “They are unharmed. They sleep - they dream. They dream properly - not empty shallow dreams we have encouraged for too long. They will remember something of me, and they will dream. Maybe their eyes will open to the wonder in the world.”
Ilatheril headed towards the back doors. “We’re heading down.”
“You are using this creature’s hiding spell as a beacon? Ye gods, were you his tutor?”
Ilatheril’s grin widened. “He’s hiding from you, didn’t he? Guess I taught him well.”
“Point. But why not hide from the Unseelie?”
“How many of the Seelie fae could hide from an Unseelie Sidhe? Well, a Seelie Sidhe who isn‘t staring wistfully out of the window, anyway?”
“Very few. Of course I would have thought that Unseelie bacchanals would be more distracting than Seelie windows.”
The pair wandered down the stairs, the building was surprisingly empty. The few people they did come across were quickly ushered into a dream fuelled sleep by Sitharensor’s magic. Still, it was oddly deserted. “An aversion spell?”
Ilatheril tilted his head, feeling for the magic. He sighed heavily and answered the Seelie, “I don’t know why I’m even trying. I wouldn’t know how to detect and aversion spell even if it made people run screaming from the building.”
Sitharensor grimaced. His certainty was beginning to waver. There was a creature in this building, a creature that the Seelie had considered too evil to exist... It occurred to the Sidhe just how long it had been since he had been without his bodyguard... he had never gone into a potentially dangerous situation without at least the shadow of Hrolf behind him.
He glanced at the Unseelie. Exactly how good an ally was a Sidhe without magic? He cut the thought short, fearing the inevitable conclusion.
The last door opened. Sitharensor’s power surged forwards. Darkness, pure blackness in front of him. He took a deep breath, hearing it echoed by the Unseelie, as the stepped into the murk.
Sitharensor strode forwards, bending to touch each guard in turn. They were cold, incredibly cold. But amazingly alive, their breathing was shallow, their heart beat weak, but they lived. Even in the few seconds Sitharensor was touching him he felt heat beginning to come back to the human’s body. He looked up at Ilatheril curiously.
“They’re young. They’re healthy. They can spare a little life force.”
Sitharensor grimaced, standing up form the unconscious forms and fighting the urge to wipe his hand, as if he’d touched something unclean. “I thought you were unschooled, Ilatheril. I have heard of the darkness that hungers, the night that thirsts. It is not a simple spell, an easily spell, or a spell for an amateur.”
“Why, that sounds like an accusation. May I offer a rebuttal? What you know about Unseelie ‘dark’ magic can be written on the back of a postage stamp.”
“Which in turn makes it a positive encyclopaedia compared to your less than extensive knowledge concerning magic of any shade.”
“So like a Seelie, easier to live in a fantasy world than deal with the world around you. Speaking of which, I take it the reason why we aren’t hearing sirens is because all those nice people out there aren’t seeing me decking coppers with black magic?”
Sitharensor glanced through his own extended glamour coat, lips tightening in distaste where the mask curled and burned slightly round the edges, a faint haze. There was too much iron around here for pure magic. “Of course. Now tell me about the darkness that hungers.”
“Knew I’d corrupt you. It isn’t a spell, it’s a summons, almost a possession. Don’t ask me what is summoned or where from because I don’t know and wouldn’t tell a Seelie even if I did. You call as much as you need or can handle. If you only want a little, it doesn’t take much power, skill or even knowledge. Some non-Sidhe can actually do it.”
“I have never heard of that... do the freedom obsessed Unseelie also keep their people ignorant?”
“Yes, actually, but you knew that. The Seelie don’t know about - what a shock, Seelie ignorance! Because the amount of darkness I can call - or the amount that any ‘lesser’ fae can summon is negligible. What I just did to them humans will cause a slight chill to fae. At best.”
Sitharensor looked down at the men. “A slight chill? Do be sure to avoid medicine as a career path. Your talent for understatement would have the terminally ill as moderately unwell.”
“A human has no glamour, and precious little magical protection. Most of them. Unlike humans. Also, you ever tried to eat the life force of an immortal? Better have a big appetite or you’re going to be full and bloated before they’re even dizzy.”
“Well, perhaps it is time to see what these gentleman’s life force has bought us.” The secure doors swung open at the slightest touch... aided by just a brush of magic. Sitharensor strode through into the foyer... and froze. Inside an iron tower... a temple to the death of dreams.
Ilatheril turned and looked in surprise at the Seelie. “Why are you shocked? I though this is were the Seelie held all their power? Government and business and industry and all that stuff?”
“How elegantly you sum up our domains. But yes, all this stuff where the Seelie hold our strength.” Sitharensor didn’t look very happy about it.
“Thought so. Without it you’d never have won the war. So if this is all yours, why the grief? Or was it just all a creation so you can do the tragic angst thing you do so well? Ode to a skyscraper? See how the stock market falls? If I could compare you to a payday?”
“Please cease your attempts at verse, muses around the world scream in pain at their echoes. This is something I will change... the Seelie court seems to have spent too many years, too many decades, centuries even, accumulating power and influence under the illusion of our ideals while at the same time our ideals become shells of what they once were.”
“You mean the Seelie court’s being compromising it’s values!? Oh, alas, all this time just a mask? How could anyone have known that?! Oh wait, the Unseelie, who’ve been saying the same thing for millennia! Ok, this has been a few years in the making but, ‘I told you so!’”
Sitharensor stopped his dazed gaze towards the ceiling and turn to the Unseelie in a blur, his magic prickling across Ilatheril’s skin and causing even the humans who were advancing on them from the reception desk and security station to freeze in surprise. The Seelie’s intense violet eyes burned through his glamour into Ilatheril. “There are limits, Ilatheril! Even for the Unseelie, even for my husband, there are limits!” The Sidhe’s voice hissed, his rage held back by a minor thread of self control.
“Limits, Sith?” Ilatheril’s tone was light, but had an edge that could cut glass. “Limits are a Seelie thing, Sith. Remember? One of your empty laws you play lip service too while doing what you want - one of your pretty little lies.” Sitharensor stiffened, his hands jerking towards Ilatheril while his power raised higher. “You precious values that you hold to, that you try and force on all around you, are so easily wiggled round and cast aside when they’re inconvenient. Tell me, Sith, what was it? The Seelie Court‘s, the court that esteems love, hatred of the Unseelie that lead you to cast aside your values? Or was it your compassionless ambition for dominion that drove you to it? C’mon, which? While the Unseelie held true to what we believed in, what was it that lead the shining court to abandon theirs?”
Sitharensor was shuddering now, rage dancing in his eyes. His control held by a thread. His glamour flickering. His voice, when it finally came, was pressed and hard, heated by rage and weighed down by grief. “Despair! Despair, Unseelie! Our values were dying - and ye gods, we killed them to save them! The world was dying, we were dying, the Sidhe were dying - we still are! Our leaders were deaf, content to mope and mourn and dream of times past. War was coming - we did what we thought we must to preserve what little we had left.” He dropped to his knees. “It was a mistake. A mistake we will ever regret. A mistake that I must fix.”
“The Seelie court made a mistake?” Ilatheril hissed. “Or is it just that the Seelie court is a mistake?”
Sitharensor’s glamour shattered. The humans’ knees bucked as they fell prostate, wide, awe filled eyes, averted from the glory they could hardly perceive. “Mistake?! Oh, how easy it is for you Unseelie! How easy it is to be Unseelie - you just have to be. You never strive. Never try. Never raise your eyes higher. We reach eternally for perfection - and you complain that we cannot achieve it? You, who never even tries?”
Ilatheril opened his mouth, before looking over the stunned humans and closing it again. “Ok, we disagree, yeah, we’ll fight this out later - but a better time and place, right?”
Sitharensor took a deep shuddering breath, fighting for control. His burning violet eyes turned to the humans. He lashed out, magic hammering into their minds. A dozen humans had gathered. All of them collapsed.
Ilatheril grinned, “and you accuse me of lack of subtlety?”
Sitharensor pulled himself unsteadily to his feet, returning the smile weakly. “They are unharmed. They sleep - they dream. They dream properly - not empty shallow dreams we have encouraged for too long. They will remember something of me, and they will dream. Maybe their eyes will open to the wonder in the world.”
Ilatheril headed towards the back doors. “We’re heading down.”
“You are using this creature’s hiding spell as a beacon? Ye gods, were you his tutor?”
Ilatheril’s grin widened. “He’s hiding from you, didn’t he? Guess I taught him well.”
“Point. But why not hide from the Unseelie?”
“How many of the Seelie fae could hide from an Unseelie Sidhe? Well, a Seelie Sidhe who isn‘t staring wistfully out of the window, anyway?”
“Very few. Of course I would have thought that Unseelie bacchanals would be more distracting than Seelie windows.”
The pair wandered down the stairs, the building was surprisingly empty. The few people they did come across were quickly ushered into a dream fuelled sleep by Sitharensor’s magic. Still, it was oddly deserted. “An aversion spell?”
Ilatheril tilted his head, feeling for the magic. He sighed heavily and answered the Seelie, “I don’t know why I’m even trying. I wouldn’t know how to detect and aversion spell even if it made people run screaming from the building.”
Sitharensor grimaced. His certainty was beginning to waver. There was a creature in this building, a creature that the Seelie had considered too evil to exist... It occurred to the Sidhe just how long it had been since he had been without his bodyguard... he had never gone into a potentially dangerous situation without at least the shadow of Hrolf behind him.
He glanced at the Unseelie. Exactly how good an ally was a Sidhe without magic? He cut the thought short, fearing the inevitable conclusion.
The last door opened. Sitharensor’s power surged forwards. Darkness, pure blackness in front of him. He took a deep breath, hearing it echoed by the Unseelie, as the stepped into the murk.