She motions for Mordred to proceed forward, towards the wide, round table.
I watch numbly as he sets the Siege Perilous aright, an eager smile playing at the corners of his lips.
“Welcome to the club, sis!” he says. “Now let me show you something too.”
With a flourishing bow, he spins around and sits on the throne-like chair.
“No,” I whisper.
Both for what I finally realize he is, and for what he’s done.
“Shhhhh,” Carman whispers, holding me closer to her until my whole body seems to have been set ablaze.
Mordred’s head slams backward as the figures carved in the seat start to move. The demons engraved in its base stretch up languorously, like big cats waking from a nap, forcing the angels to retreat further towards the crest rail at the top of the chair. Then the demons’ mouths open wide and a thick black liquid pours forth.
But this time, instead of swallowing Mordred up, the goo shoots out towards the round table, engulfing it in a thick black morass that drips all the way down to the floor. There’s a loud crack as of wood splitting, and the whole building shakes as the slime falls to the ground, twirling on itself in a gigantic whirlpool with loud, sucking noises.
A dim, grey light emerges from the pool’s dark center, growing as it takes over the vortex of miasma at our feet.
I wipe my clammy hands upon the remains of my dress as the circle pulses like some gigantic heart, tantalizing, and my feet carry me closer to the abyss, drawn to it like a moth to a flame.
Then Carman suddenly shoves me forward. I stumble as the chasm opens up beneath me, offering a view of grey, dreary cliffs. I try to hold onto one of the chairs, but it topples along with me and we both fall through.
My body slams into the ground with a thunderous crack, the chair exploding into thousands of splinters next to me. Tears spring to my eyes as the air rushes out of my lungs, and I hear Carman’s laugh ring out above me before she follows me down, her black dress of feathers billowing out to slow her descent.
I let out a dazed moan, my ears ringing, barely conscious of her landing next to me. My fingers scrape uselessly against the ground’s jagged surface as Carman takes in the achromatic view, a greedy look on her face. Then she turns to me with another cold smile.
“Welcome to Hell, my dear.”
I wander around the desolate place, my eyes gritty with sleep though I can never find rest in this world of endless crepuscule. I gnash my teeth together, trying to dislodge the grains of sand that inevitably find their way into my mouth.
Just like the wind slowly eroding the proud side of a mountain to dust, I feel that this place is steadily grinding me down to a desiccated pulp. Already I feel myself growing indifferent to my plight. The reason for my coming here has become blurry, indistinct.
Yet my footsteps take me irreversibly back to the place where I started. But the chasm through which I fell no longer exists, and I find myself staring up at an endlessly grey, dead sky.
After a few minutes—or is it hours?—I start on my way back down, tiny rocks and pebbles slicing into the plants of my feet, making them bleed. My wounds inevitably close up, replaced by fresh new skin, only to be cut open by the gravel again at the next step. I follow the thin trail of blood I’ve left behind on my way up, now a dull brown. Soon, it will be grey as well, like everything else around here.
“Morgan?”
I stop.
The whispery voice rises again from the boulders to my left, “Morgan?”
A thin form detaches itself from the face of the cliff, then a second, both covered in the grey dust that permeates this world.
A small part of me says I should know these people, that I’ve talked to them before, been helped by them….
I cock my head, digging through my sluggish mind, fighting the growing part of me that doesn’t want to care about anything anymore.
“Keva?” I croak, my voice no longer accustomed to being used. “And…banshee?”
The two figures press forward like lost puppies that have found their master again. Keva grabs my hand and holds onto it.
I look at her dispassionately, noting how her sunken cheeks make her big eyes look like giant marbles in her drawn face.
“I thought you didn’t…that you wouldn’t…,” the girl starts before taking in a shuddering breath. “Come, we’ve got something to show you.”
I allow Keva and the banshee to pull me after them, my sluggish footsteps tracing a new blood path down the mountainside. It doesn’t really matter where I go. In the end, it’s all the same.
They stop upon a small promontory overlooking the endless ashy hills, a wide circle of stones lying on top of it like a crown.
“Look,” Keva breathes, pointing at the closest of the boulders. She wipes away the latest layer of dust covering its face, coughing as the particles of soot swirl around her before settling back down.
“Look, Morgan!” Keva insists, pushing me closer to the monolith.
With a tired sigh, I drop my gaze to the stone and find that someone’s painstakingly carved words into its surface. A message…. But who would bother with such a pointless act down here where knowledge is as obsolete as one’s will?
Yet, as I read, the words slowly start to sink in, raising the sound of a dim alarm bell deep within me.
“Teind,” I say aloud, letting my fingers trace the word’s letters over and over again, my mind drawing up its echo from deep within its recesses.
Keva’s small hand seeks mine out and squeezes.
“Morgan,” she whispers, “I’m scared.”
Alessa Ellefson is a woman of all sorts - she loves to tell all sorts of stories to all sorts of people in all sorts of places. From sun-soaked California to regular-soaked Belgium, she has left a trail of giants, fairies, battles, and magic in the thoughts of her followers and dozens of recycle bins.
Blood of the Fey, her first published novel and the first in the Morgana Trilogy, was written at coffee shops between a day job in finance and nights of “research” on Korean dramas. Rise of the Fey is the sophomore entry in the series and was finished in winter-time Brussels, where the pounding rain soothed the rambunctious temper that inevitably arose after long editorial hours.
You can find out more about Alessa’s writings via her website at www.alessaellefson.com, and get other extras through her newsletter.
1 Alcoholic beverage.
2 Canonical hour: mid-morning (around 9 a.m.).
3 Viral inflammation of the respiratory system that produces a bark-like cough.
4 Pretty.
5 “this witch of a”
6 Around midnight.
7 Metal container that hangs from a chain and in which incense is burned.
8 Money.
9 Russian for “Write it down, please!”
10 A container that looks like a long pear with three bumps instead of two,that’s used for distillation or other alchemical processes.
11 An alembic where the flask is closed off at the top and has at least one tube attached to it.
12 A second opening or tube.
13 Pruning shears.
14 Volcanic Explosivity Index. A VEI of 7 or 8 is characterized by a very powerful eruption that can eject between 24 to 240 cubic miles (or 100 to 1000 cubic kilometers) of magma.
15 Newbies.
16 Killing.
17 Types of fish found in Lake Winnebago.
18 A young boy.
19 ‘Thanks be to God’ in Latin.
20 Alcohol, typically whiskey.
21 From William Congreve’s quote: “Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.”
22 Idiot.
23 Great physical appeal.
24 Definition not for the faint-hearted: Cryptosporidia are parasites that are normally passed in feces, which can lead to a number of bad side-effects.
25 Hindi idiom that literally means “What would a monkey know of the taste o
f ginger?” Meaning: someone who can’t appreciate something’s value.
26 Dead.
27 The smallest mouse fed to reptiles. Then come fuzzies, crawlers, hoppers and adults.
28 Church
29 Courting.
30 An overly critical person.
31 A supermarket store.
32 Sword.
33 Wife.
34 A way for one political party to gain the advantage even if the other party possesses the majority in its favor already.
35 Idiot.
36 Jail.
37 Give a thorough whipping.
38 Coward.
39 Appetizers.
40 War between two groups of the same party.
41 A three-leafed pattern where the three leaves intersect in their middle like a stylized Venn diagram.
42 Mild French swearing expression, meaning roughly “Holy cow!”
43 The two projections that form the cross-guard of a sword
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