Rebirth and Second Chances

Chapter 300: Defeat

The looks of horror on the faces of the Sidhe watching my actions tempered the satisfaction I felt after I'd landed. But not by much. The transition from dragon to Sidhe I made as I landed on the Keep wall was almost as effective in demoralizing the army as the strafing runs I had made targeting their ships. Those who saw my transformation began shouting in disbelief. That fear and confusion rippled throughout those surviving and the few combatants that remained ran for their lives.

I'd allowed some of the Galleons and Skeids to survive, enough to load up those members of the armies of Man that would live after their battle with the Fomorians ended. Any that survived the treachery I'd engendered between the Greeks and Vikings would be free to go. To report what had happened here today.

I wanted them to return to the mainland and report to their leaders that they had been betrayed. That monster and Man alike had proved deceitful. The most effective means to combat man was to set them to killing each other. It was almost a maxim at this point to acknowledge they killed each other more viciously than the Sidhe ever could.

Zeus and Odin would know the truth, but they could only communicate with their people using Oracles, Shamans, and Priests. Those messages tended to be garbled, nothing but esoteric bits of information that were often more confusing than no message at all.

As I turned to face the ocean feeling the winds begin to increase in ferocity, I watched as the sky began boiling and thunder clouds streamed in. The ocean's water began rolling, waves lashing at the beaches increasing in size until giant waves threatened to destroy what few ships remained of those, I'd left undamaged.

Zeus and Poseidon were definitely not happy and were determined to make their displeasure known. Lightning bolts began ricocheting across the ground, great peals of thunder echoing before and after each bolt discharged. The sound of thunder was so close that we felt the vibration of each rumble standing on the Fortress's battlements.

I watched in glee as the lightning bolts Zeus intended to punish my effrontery were instead attracted to the metal armor and weapons of his own people. Zeus might be able to cast his lightning bolts, but even the Divine had to follow the rules of the universe. And metal served as a lightning rod, attracting and grounding each of his Levin bolts.

He could not intervene directly. The only thing he could do was unleash the fury of nature that was part of his [Domain]. Perhaps that was what Lleu Llaw, and the others were concerned about. What they meant when Zeus and Odin would act.

If Zeus could direct his bolts to strike us directly, that might be problematic, but he couldn't. And for all of his sound and fury, as he blustered in anger, his blasts were reduced to a lot of nothing, his actions doing as much damage to his people as they had done to themselves.

The Fomorians, protected in the deep trenches the Greeks had created for them, were as safe from Zeus's retribution as we were, and simply waited for his tantrum to abate. Any bolts that came near were either attracted to the metal detritus of Man or dispersed as the trench they were hiding in grounded the incoming lightning.

Unable to simply smite those of us that had incurred his anger, he was forced to put in play his Harpies. They were mortal for all their monstrous abilities and would have been happily accepted by the Unseelie. But because they were mortal and children of the Gods, they could be directed to intervene, skating the edge of the proscription against Divine interaction.

The rift Zeus opened to allow flock after flock of Harpy to arrive was pushing the boundaries of acceptable intervention, even at that. He was already close to breaching the rules that confined him with his attack of lighting. Much more and he would be forced to deal with the other Pantheon of Gods, angered that he had broken their Divine covenant.

"You see what your actions have done?" Lleu Llaw Gryffes demanded.

"I do. And so what?" I responded with disdain. "Your magic has been restored. [Fairy] and the fey are alive again. If you can't deal with the Harpies now that you can sling spells and kill them from a distance, maybe it is time for you to fade."

Merlin was the first to react to my taunt. As a Slaugh, his ability to fly gave him access and range beyond that of the other gathered Sidhe. Although he might have been the first to respond to my taunt, his actions had a rippling effect and released the other Slaugh to act. Like a great tide of black and purple vengeance, a sea of tentacles and teeth rose to decimate the flocks of Harpies that Zeus had gathered.

Born of water, but creatures of the air, the Slaugh had a natural defense when it came to lightning. A natural adaption that allowed them to gather the energy, channel it, and release it, repurposing the attack as their own weapon.

Their skin was almost rubber-like in texture and quality, a natural insulator from the storm's effect. But it was their innate magic that allowed them to focus that lightning and turn Zeus's weapon against the Harpies, destroying them with a precision that decimated this latest foe. Hundreds of Harpies were reduced to bits of carrion as feather, blood, and bone rained across the battlefield.

I wasn't sure if Poseidon had been prodded by Zeus to enter the fight as well. But he acted once the Harpies were dealt with. It was possible he needed no goading that he had been angered by the destruction of so many ships, all of the Greek Gods were flawed, filled with hubris as they exemplified the worse qualities of character and honor. But as Lleu Llaw had feared and warned, the Kraken was stirred to action.

A great tentacled behemoth of a beast oozed out of the ocean's depths. The creature's eyes were by themselves as large as any Slaugh. Its mouth was rimmed by a beak powerful enough to tear even the largest whale in half. It was modeled loosely on the bodies of squid and walrus. The tentacles it used for grasping were dwarfed by a sleek and powerful tail that could propel the creature quickly, even giving it mobility onshore.

It was like watching an ink stain shrink and condense as the body of the Kraken quickly approached. The illusion of the blackest void swallowing up tide and sand as it braved the sandy shore was mesmerizing. The blackness of deep ocean water rising and forming a horrific maw that shaped and enclosed the serrated teeth that had served as a nightmare of death and destruction for longer than Man had walked the Urt.

It moved walrus-like once it had breached, but with the strength and power of a Demi-god, that ungainly undulation of movement was still powerful, destructive, and fast. The Kraken was a son of Poseidon, one of the first of his mortal children to be given life. It was a feared monster, the bane of coasts and ships, an instrument of Poseidon's pique. Since the first person had learned to build fire, Poseidon had loosed it to gain vengeance and assert control.

It was a futile endeavor this time. A wasted chess piece, because just as I had predicted, the Sea Hag responded when the Kraken wrestled its way onto the shore. Arriving from her own lair beneath the ocean's waters, she rose to contend with the behemoth that Poseidon had summoned to defend Sidhe land and people from its monstrous appetite.

Its void-like aperture, the bottomless pit of a stomach and digestive track, found itself stymied and blocked as she released her magic. An attack that was rooted in sound. A siren's call that was sharp enough to rend the flesh from the creature as well as summon and command every Selkie to swarm and fight. A command that was answered instantly as each Selkie shifted into their seal form before attacking.

A tide of seals that focused on one tentacle at a time as the Sea Hag used her sound attacks to shred that tentacle. That sound of the ocean you hear when you put a seashell to your ear was part of her [Domain]. That magic of sound trapped within, the unending roar of surf crashing against the shore. That magic was claimed by the Sea, a working of illusion and glamour giving life and reality.

Sky, sea, and sand were filled with the blood of our enemies. And the Sidhe standing beside me finally realized that we were not victims. Orders began being issued. Troops of Goblins and Redcaps charged into the few pockets of Fomorian and Man that remained. Seelie and Unseelie rode out from the Fortress, Fey horses dancing across and around fortifications to meet the Fomorians inside their entrenchments.

Blood ran as we decimated our enemies. Those few ships that I had left to survive watched in horror as the armies that had besieged our people, that had slowly bled and killed the Sidhe, were completely and utterly destroyed.

The Sidhe were too far gone in their lust for vengeance. Too lost to anger and despair to take prisoners or offer surrender. These invaders had killed Sidhe children, and for that, there could be no forgiveness. There would be no quarter offered.

I watched as the armies that had threatened our people perished, and I stood on the battlement waiting until the last Man died, the last Fomorian was slaughtered, and the Kraken was nothing but food for the birds to fight over.

Zeus and Odin could rail in their Heavenly Courts. [Fairy] had come to Urt, and like the seasons, it was time for a change. The Sidhe had survived Winter's Court. It was time for Summer's Court to reign.

And if the prophecy was true. If the Sidhe would wither and die with [Fairies] decline. A [Fairy] revitalized should prove effective in both satisfying and negating the words of providence offered by the [Fates].