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Two Worlds Collide
Location: Franklin Mountains – El Paso, Texas
Time: Morning, Day After Satellite Attacks
Time: Morning, Day After Satellite Attacks
“So, tell me where you are and I will be there.“ The Ambassador asked, but it could be easily interpreted as an order. There was precious little in this world she asked nicely for. There was no point in pleasantries with the White Witch. They were only at the beginning of their quest for Gwyneth’s memories, plenty of work laid out the road ahead. While it was work, there would be opportunities for fun… Even if Odette was the only having fun at the expense of White Witch facing her trials.
She waited for her response, drumming manicured nails across the table. Blue hair bobby pinned into a small bun at the back of her head, icy blue eyes scanning the map of North America. Her full face of makeup, as usual done up with expert hands wearing a bold red matte lipstick, a change from her typical nude pink.
”I’m in the Franklin Mountains about eight miles north of El Paso, Texas. There’s a clearing behind one of the larger peaks close to a system of caves. I’ll be waiting in the shade.” Marie hung up abruptly, perhaps in defiance of the Ambassador’s tone of voice.
She and Holt touched down near a small hill in the clearing that blocked most of the sun, remnants of the cool night still flowing through the valley as a gentle breeze that would soon give way to the scorching heat. This time, however, Marie dressed for the occasion. She dawned a navy romper with long, billowy sleeves that gave it some Victorian flair, the waist cinched in with a silver-buckled belt of a similar fabric. She was tempted to wear boots, but opted instead for some open toed sandals with a slight heel. The glamour charm normally worn about her neck, however, was instead packed away. The Ambassador already knew her by one name, might as well know both of them.
What will you tell The Ambassador upon her arrival? Holt mentally questioned Marie, still under the guise of a great, black horse. We have been given no further clues regarding the whereabouts of Gwyneth’s next possession.
Maybe not, Marie responded, combing through her dark hair briefly, untangling the knots gathered the previous night and letting them fall into thick waves, but her power to conjure portals is useful, and with the Hounds scattering after yesterday’s attack, we’ll need someone powerful on our side.
Odette pursed her lips at the deadline tone, tapping the phone to disconnect. “Someone is feeling feisty today.”
She peered over the map tracing a line to El Paso. “Are you ready to leave Bach?”
“Always ready for you, My Lady.” He replied.
She nodded once breezing out the room, a distinct clack of heels Vienna was waiting with her purse. Together they faced the large floor to ceiling mirror, Odette raised her hands beginning to call upon the Arcane Stream, hands surrounding with blue misty light. Words of Power that felt as familiar as to speak the name of a lover. The burst of life and light grew from a crack in the empty space, the formation of a door from within the light came next with golden polished hinges and doorknob. The portal creation took only a few minutes.
She opened the door stepping through, heel finding grass. The dry air was hot, the sun bright. Odette reached into her purse, pulling free a pair of heart shaped sunglasses. Bach came shortly after, he thought twice of his invisibility - lifting the veil for convenience of joining any conversation. She peered around, closing the door after Bach crossed. The portal dissolved with blue light.
“Discreet. Good.”
Marie and Holt stood a few feet away from the Ambassador’s portal, Marie turning her head to avoid the violent flash of light as the mystical construct dissipated. Her head immediately turned to the Ambassador’s fey friend, having only sensed his presence in their previous encounters. He seemed mischievous, harboring around him a sinister air, but what else would she expect?
She hopped down from atop Holt’s back, swinging her leg over the saddle as if she were a gymnast, her dismount much more graceful than the first few attempts. There was a tension between them despite how hilariously civilian they both looked. This would be their first true meeting, well, not considering the supposed council held by Gwyneth and the Ambassador, which left Marie both giddy and weary.
”I doubt any townsfolk will be wandering into the mountains any time soon,” Marie replied with a wicked smile, mentally recounting her ride with Josephine.
”An oil derrick went down the other night. ‘Electrical storm’ so I’ve heard. No one will bother us.”
Marie closed some distance between she and the Ambassador, standing now a few paces apart, the shade now retreating as the sun peeked over the hills. Holt trotted along behind.
Odette’s eyes glanced to Holt’s form, as a bigger creature he casted a strange shadow over the witch. She couldn’t read anything from him. Next she ran a judgemental eye up and down the White Witch’s outfit, some scars around her ankles caught Odette’s attention. They looked relatively fresh akin to a burn. “How oddly specific. I safely assume you were involved in someway. I certainly hope that is not how you were injured, the little scars on your ankles are telling.
She gestured to Bach, “This is the first ‘official’ introduction of my partner, Bach. He has been by my side since day one, he was not present for my little trip into Gwyneth’s illusionary world where I met her. That was a special to do.”
Bach stepped forward, a pleasant smile and a sweeping bow he said, “A pleasure.”
“Firstly, what happened after we parted way in Las Vegas?”
Marie nodded to Bach, a little chuckle escaping her lips. She loved the formality of the fey. Holt bowed his head in unison, the gesture made more grandiose by his equine appearance.
Sighing, Marie turned back to the Ambassador, recalling the night’s events with no lack of spiteful fervor.
”After you left, I sent myself and the group to a stronghold beneath the city, the workplace of the Lachance coven, one of Five, well, Four old witching traditions in Vegas. Once their leader, Genevieve, healed me of my injuries and the silver poisoning, I took a walk outside to clear my mind.”
Marie looked down at her ankles, having forgotten about the ordeal until now.
”A few months ago, I aided S.T.R.I.K.E. in the capture of some maniac named Diplodoc. A woman under his control who calls herself the Silver Sorceress had a personal vendetta against me. She’d apparently escaped prison and come looking for me, among others. I was still weak from the fight with the Hounds, I couldn’t combat her illusions. She made me see . . . it doesn’t matter.” Marie quickly changed the subject, not wanting to linger on any sour memories.
”But it helped me see things differently, made me remember who I was, both figuratively and literally. I had a memory of myself as a little girl, no older than four or five, being shooed from a village next to a dense forest. Sound familiar?” Marie’s head perked up, hoping for a bit of confirmation from the Ambassador, who, ironically enough, was the most well versed in Gwyneth’s history between the two of them.
As The Ambassador listened, her eyes never left the witch. When the mention of illusion, Odette believed the Silver Sorceress preyed on her while White Witch was weak and went to a tried and true method of playing upon fears using shades of the past as her puppets. It unintentionally inspired White Witch, possibly lending to break from her little pack. The vision she had did sound familiar, when Gwyneth was a child she had lived in a remote village on the edge of a forest.
She scoffed, “This Silver Sorceress is under the thumb of another? A sorceress with no agency of her own is no true practitioner. Had I been there, Doctor Diplodoc would have been missing his puppet. Had you been at full strength she would have suffered a similar fate, no? Will we be expecting another attempt?”
Marie shook her head.
”No, she left a message for me before she left. Something along the lines of ‘you’d be dead if I wanted.’ I think seeing me in distress did enough to sate her desire for revenge.”
Odette nodded, “Good, we do not need the distractions. As for your vision… what you saw was a glimpse into Gwyneth’s childhood.” She began, walking over to the shade now. She lifted her sunglasses perching them on top of her head. “She showed me everything. A woman who’s life was defined by one betrayal to the next. The world she has crafted for her soul inside Sight, and seemingly across all pieces of her soul was a stroke of master craftsmanship. Do you realize just how powerful your prior self was?”
”Her soul?” Holt spoke aloud, turning to Marie who looked equally as perplexed.
”Gwyneth’s soul is split between her various possessions?”
This was a crucial piece of evidence that had formerly been missing from Holt and Marie’s understanding of Gwyneth. But now, it all made much more sense.
”That’s why I feel her power when I interact with the items. They aren’t just keys to my memory, they harbor seeds of power!” Marie was overjoyed. Though she was still unsure what happened to force Gwyneth to take such bold action, it provided some insight into her past.
”It is no simple task to rend one’s soul from their body in such a way, certainly not if they wish to maintain the level of autonomy of which you speak.” Puck’s warning rang even more true in Holt’s mind, now knowing what he did. If they continued to collect pieces of Gwyneth’s very soul, Marie would surely lose herself to their cause. But it wasn’t his place, nor his desire, to hinder Marie with this knowledge.
The Ambassador nodded in agreement, acknowledging the familiar.
”I’m guessing all that power had something to do with how she died. Why else would she split her soul into so many pieces? There must have been enough of her essence wandering around to be reborn, drawn back to this world by the other halves.”
Marie turned back to the Ambassador, eyes wide with anticipation. She’d managed to win this little bit of information, but would the Ambassador volunteer the rest of what she knew so easily? Marie decided she would need to take a different approach, arrive at the answers to her questions in due time.
”When you met with her, Gwyneth gifted you with her Sight, yes? Have you seen or felt any other items since we last spoke? That one memory is all I’ve been able to come up with since, I don’t know what triggers my visions.”
Odette’s eyes narrowed, their shared excitement confirmed Puck was staying firmly out of this particular affair. She hadn’t assumed he would have revealed anything, but he knew everything she did. He may have dropped his own clues to the witch. “She did and no, I have not. Truthfully I do not know what to expect or where to expect the next item to appear. I was brought to Las Vegas by other means.” She lied. She knew there was seven more items to collect, but she was sincere in not knowing how it felt to become aware of the next item. She had an idea.
“Have you attempted to use Sight? I was only able to access the trunk that held the coins. Using them is outside my expertise.” She admitted casting her gaze away, never fond to use or engage in divination tools. “Her items have a habit of blocking locator spells.”
Marie removed the small trunk from one of the bags strapped to Holt’s saddle, moving closer to the Ambassador in the quickly fading shade. Its contents were a strange assortment of wooden, copper, and bone pieces or coins, all etched with symbols Marie didn’t recognize. A few looked vaguely familiar, like individual characters from other magical scripts and alphabets she had seen in the past, but even if that were the case, they were likely used to represent an idea entirely separate to their original meaning.
”The thought had crossed my mind, but I can’t make sense of these markings. Gwyneth must have developed her own divinatory system. It has elements of classical geomancy mixed with hints of scapulimancy, though I don’t know from where the bones came, but other than that, I’m not sure.”
Marie closed her eyes, hands gripping the small box tightly, hoping that their meaning would become evident. It was a long shot, but perhaps her power to read them would return when put to the test. Rather unconfidently, she took a collection of coins into her hand and tossed them into the air. Much to her surprise, they never touched the ground.
Instead, the collection of coins scattered in the air just above the coarse dirt, twirling slowly in place at various distances from one another, revealing that most of the coins had markings on both sides, slight alterations of the opposite side. After a moment or two, the coins finally stopped, levitating immobally.
Stunned, Marie walked around the collection of coins, which, she soon noticed, formed an irregular pattern on its own. She scanned each face, hoping to make sense of their meaning. Unfortunately, most remained uncoded, but three of the coins stood out.
”Caledfwlch,” Marie read the first coin, ”That’s the Welsh name of Excalibur, though she likely didn’t mean for it to portray the actual sword of legend, but an item of power or import.”
The first divination showed promise. If Marie had been able to accurately read that coin, it must have been a clue for the location of Gwyneth’s next item. The following coin was decidedly more abstract, separated from Caledfwlch by a few other coins. Marie took longer to decipher its symbol, but eventually came to a solid conclusion.
”I think this one roughly translates to faerie or spirit? Maybe devil? But it isn’t literal, more of a metaphor for something a spirit does.”
The final coin was instantly recognizable to her. It was the alchemical symbol for air, only a coin between the first two.
”Air? Maybe the upper air . . . OH! Thought, intellect, the mind, which is the domain of air.”
Marie did a final pass of the coins, but those were the only decipherable three of the lot. Their closeness to one another surely meant something, though Marie was unsure what that could be.
”Does any of this sound familiar? Can you make sense of the last two halves?” Marie posed the question to the Ambassador, Bach, and Holt.
”Caledfwlch, Excalibur, is in reference to your next possession, that much is certain. Perhaps ‘air’ is the nature of this item.” Holt theorized, unable to decipher the rest, likely as a result of Marie’s own uncertainty.
“Clues by vague divination. Joy.” Odette replied dryly, looking over the symbols and considering them Bach did the same, his language skills being of use. “Air represents communication as well. Devil, spirit is traditionally that of radical change or…” She searched for the word. “Malléable, influence, I am not well versed in such things.”
“Bach, your take?”
He crossed his arms, studying the runic symbols their relation to each other. Scratching free a few leaves from his head. An impish smile broke across his face, “I am not well versed on ancient human languages but I am better equipped to make educated guesses. What could possibly be a vessel for knowledge? Your mind? Your thoughts?”
He pointed, holding the answer but reveling in the cryptic meanings. Taking the opportunity for a lesson. “Come now, My Lady. This is easy.”
“If it were easy, my dear we would not be puzzling over it.” Odette replied. “Be clear.”
Bach turned his attention to White Witch, giving her the opportunity. “Where would you keep your thoughts? Where was the best place to store your knowledge six-hundred years ago? Especially if one was literate.”
”A book,” Marie responded with less enthusiasm than she should, not because she wasn’t pleased to have arrived at the same answer, but because the answer still didn’t get them any closer to finding the item in question.
”The item is a book, but that’s not very specific. Maybe there’s something else here that details what the book is about or what it’s called. Witchcraft, obviously, but so far, each of Gwyneth’s items has had a name and some hint as to its location. There must be something we’re missing in the runes I can’t read.”
Bach grinned still, “There is something more, but while My Lady had a fair guess at the faerie/spirit rune think on what else faerie are famously associated with. That final rune my first guess is Hearth. It is a symbol similarly used across the Old World, a little different - naturally, but you see the way it is curved.”
“Bargaining, favours.” Odette supplied, she glanced to White Witch. “Gwyneth had ties with the Summer Court, even asked for news of King Oberon and Queen Mab upon my arrival. I believe she would make that association here within her divination tools.” Feeding tidbits as they came relevant should satisfy the Witch’s thirst to know more.
Marie went over the words in her mind. Book, Bargain, Spirit, Hearth. Book, Bargain, Spirit, Hearth. Knowledge, Book, Spirit, Hearth . . .
”Oh my god!” Marie exclaimed. ”I think I know what it is!”
Marie opened the small trunk filled with other coins, those she’d cast floating back to their proper place before she closed it and set it aside.
”You were close with the King and Queen of the Summer Court, which is amazing by the way, but what other powerful spirit-like being did she almost certainly interact with, someone she would have shown you in your meeting with her?” Marie questioned the Ambassador, eyes wide with glee awaiting a certain response.
“Oberon and Mab are a strange pair, even by Fey standards.” Odette replied, thinking back to her conversation and what other characters she learned about in Gwyneth’s story. Remembering the striking figure cut by the Witch-Father Bucca, she was far more interested in what she learned about Puck’s association to him but why is Bucca relevant now? The only figure closely related to traditional depictions of a Devil. She looked to the rune.
Pursing her lips, she shrugged, “Bucca, she showed me an image of the Witch-Father. Perhaps on the heels of mentioning that Hekate led me to Gwyneth’s Sight. How either of them are relevant, I am unsure.” She looked to Bach who was grinning anew.
“What is so amusing?”
Marie decided to pocket the mention of Hekate for the moment to focus on their current dilemma, but was no less shocked, honored, and wary of her involvement.
”When I was a little girl growing up in Boston, the Bucca came to me. Before I knew anything about Gwyneth, I always assumed that He’d given me my power, that I’d entered into a contract with him as a child. But that’s just how I rationalized it to myself growing up; I never signed a book like in the stories, he gave me a book. I can’t remember what it looks like or what was in it, but I think He might have ensured one of my items reached me, reawaken the witch-fire and jump start my memory, perhaps at Gwyneth’s request.”
The scale of involvement White Witch was connected to, what Gwyneth represented stunned The Ambassador. Her own involvement in this giant puzzle no less fantastic, mysterious in a way threads of fate connected. The significance of being burned by witch-fire months ago, briefly considering who could possibly guiding both of them. Was it Gwyneth, orchestrating it all?
A few moments passed in silence, she finally replied, eye fluttering from her thoughts. “With no contract, involvement with Bucca and eventually Puck. The coincidence is far too great. That book must be the next item. Hearth, home. It seems we are headed to Boston.”
”He opened my mind . . .” Marie whispered to herself, piecing together the string of coincidences that had led to this moment, just as the Ambassador. A word rung out over the mountains.
Mind.
The sky turned black, a vicious wind howling over the high hills, calling to them all. What came next was not a vision, but a manifestation. A light bloomed at their feet, growing until it enveloped them all, depicting an eerie landscape of gnarled trees aligned to form an arch, shading a dishevelled path to an unknown destination. A woman’s voice called to them.
”With Eyes to See, all is blind without a Mind to know.”
A strange sight floated down the path, a book, made of fine leather with silver vines and leaves decorating the border and spine, forming a latch over its pages. And just as quickly, everything returned to the way it was, the sun now firmly over the mountains, relentlessly beaming down on them.
Odette blinked, unmistakable was Gwyneth’s voice. The vision was fast, vivid and she felt she was back inside Sight, the brush of a soul as it were. Eyes wide she looked to the White Witch.
“Did you see that?”
”Did you see that?”
They spoke in unison. Confirming they did indeed experience that at the same time.
“That was her voice.” Odette said, breathless.
They had only collected two items, two portions of Gwyneth’s soul, and already her power began to manifest so heavily. Marie was shaking, overcome with joy, the fruits of her labor beginning to bloom. But then it dawned on her what going to Boston meant.
”The last place I saw that book was at my parent’s house. Don’t know how I’m going to explain this . . .”
Marie’s parents always believed her to be the most reclusive person they’d known. They were overjoyed when she finally moved into the city, hopeful that she would experience life in a new light. Perhaps they had gotten their wish, and the Ambassador’s presence would make for an excellent excuse to return to. Marie would introduce her parents to her best friend from Maine.
”Lady Ambassador of the Fair Folk,” Marie put on a mischievous grin to put Puck to shame, ”I hope my BFF of two years is ready to meet my parents.”
