by R J Darby
“Vile mistress!”
She spoke again, allowing her forked tongue to flit from her mouth in the most lewd way. “Do call me mistress, yes again! Perhaps there is hope for you yet. Sadly, a part of me doubts that I do believe that I will be thinking my teeth into you, but not in a manner that will be pleasant.” She crackled with laughter and unfurled her serpent body, writhing with the motion of a snake at speed and wrapping herself around the tree to the left. Her head moves towards him quickly.
“Back!” he hailed as he swung his sword - inches from her face.
She pulled back as if knowing that he would not have reached her anyway.
“Poor thing! Poor little thing! Had you have shown any of that kind of tenacity and strength, your lovely wife might still be alive. Or your children. Tell me, how exactly was it that they died? Give me the pleasure of knowing every last detail, from the tiny ripped open rib cages to the most succulent last moments where the eyes turned dead.” While leaning down, the blade once more whisked past her face, so close that some of her fine hair was flicked up by the wind of the action before again she pulled away.
“I see that you mean to torment me, but it will be I who is laughing in the end.”
“I was always told that mothers tell you not to play with your food, but since I never had one beyond being belched from the belly of the underworld, I was never privet to such a lesson. Do let me enjoy you a little more! Death will come soon enough.”
“For you!”
Rowan had heard quite enough of this. He had no intention of listening to one more insolent line. The sooner that the great serpent was down, the fastest ever world would be a better place. Not just his world, but also the human world. It was not by much of a stretch of the imagination that Caonarach's poison seeped into their existence also. Since the return of her, and the disappearance of many of the elemental gods and goddesses, the humans of Ireland had come to war; civil and that's at sea, the why such things were deemed civil the leprechaun would never understand. It could not be a coincidence.
He did not much like people, which was a very common trait among all fairy folk, but even they did not deserve the loss of their families, especially not for the entertainment of a disgusting thing like this.
Rowan lunged.
His aim had him first striking for her tail, which was wrapped around the tree. Sword met with the wood as she leaped from one to the other, using the solid muscle that had a serpentine body and laughing all along.
Moving to the shallows at the edge of the lake, she raised herself like a cobra ready to spit. Her nails, almost claws, came to tap on the gap between her breasts, letting out a sound into the cold air. Given his occupation, Rowan knew it well.
Tap tap. Tap tap. Tap tap.
Impenetrable metal, or at least nearly.
“All hard scales, I'm afraid, my dear, like the heart which beat within.”
“You have no heart,” he grunted as he yanked the blade from the tray.
“Aww,” she lay a mocking hand on her chest as if offended with an overly theatrical tilt of her head, “if I had feelings that might well have hurt, as with your blade if I was not so well protected. You underestimate my love, however. I am a woman of great heart; a great black heart beats only for the destruction and chaos of this blighted land. A black heart is still a heart, and I do love my many children deeply.”
“This land will never be blighted by the kind of evil and demons that you bring.”
“No?” Her arms extended as if to show what had already been done.
“No. Because I may only be one leprechaun, and I am sure that in taking you, I will be slain.”
She snorted, cutting him off. “If you can, take me.”
With a wiggle of his shoulders, he adjusted his stance. “As I was saying, I may only be one leprechaun, and I know that I am going to die. Yes, I have made my peace with this, but this land. Ireland beats with the heart of the gods and goddesses who carved it out from nothing to bring it to his very existence. It is power. Power of the five elements.”
“Your gods and goddesses of which you speak left long ago. Between your kind and the Pagans, I am quite sick of this nostalgia. It is a thing of the past. That was the day, and this is the twilight that is ready to bring us into the night, and it will be a long and dark one, stretching across all of eternity by my hands aided by the touch of my beautiful demon.”
“Ireland will never fall, not as long as there are fairy folk still standing, and the soul of the elements remains with us!” The light of the land caused through him then. With the help of the sword, his blood became fused with the ancestral spirits. He harnessed their love and devotion, wearing his sorrows like a shield.
“I suppose, in that case, if you are one of the lights left twinkling, I will have to put you out like a candle. Come and meet your fate, lousy leprechaun.”
Caonarach dropped down onto her front, hands lost within the water’s edge and her tail like body whipping so furiously behind her that is sprayed water with each snap.
“As you wish.”
He charged forward, swinging his blade. The gold edge of which glinted in the sun, blinding the snake woman briefly as she slept it away with her metallic claws. Rowan spun with the weight of the sword. It would have once pulled him, yet then he used the motion to swing himself around, counting the snake within the face. With a hiss, she moved backward.
It was only a minor scratch, but he had done it. He had marked for death.
“Well, that was a lucky swing,” she teased as her long tongue came to wipe up the blood; savoring It like a fine wine. “But that's as far as you're going to get. I was having fun, but now I'm far from happy.”
With the swish of her hand over the cheek, the mark faded to a pale line, no longer bleeding.
Regardless, Rowen was brimming with confidence.
“I didn't think I could do it; you know? Even with Naimh telling me that I could, but I think she was right. You're going back down where you belong.”
“You want me back in the lake? That's not a problem. If you want me, you'll have to come to me.” Caonarach turned and ducked under the waters, leaving him standing with his sword drawn and no idea which side you would come from.
The world was quiet, as quiet as Caonarach's watery holding place. He wondered if this was what it was like to be underneath that surface for so many centuries.
Rowan turned, this way and then that.
There was no sign of her.
With the sun sinking ever further, he shuddered.
She had sunk almost entirely. Here and there, he could see the flash of scales like shoals of fish darting about on the water's surface. Night with falling, and with it darkness coming? He did not know what he was to do, but he was going to do it.
Closing his eyes, he listened intently; each ripple of water amplified.
At first, all he could hear was the lapping of the tide, but as he turned in, there were other sounds too. No creature made a murmur, too smart to come anywhere near something that would so easily devour them without a second thought, but they were sounds; the drag of silt across the river bed and a wave that didn't quite match a pattern here and there.
She was coming from the North.
And he turned South, allowing her to be drawn into a trap, a specialty of this prankster.
Closer, she moved, silt, and sand dragging under the weight of her gargantuan muscle. Still, he did not move, he waited for silence; pure silence. Only then would he know that she was about to strike.
Her movement towards him seemed to go on for an eternity, sounding so close that he wondered if the cold in the air was her breath caressing his neck.
He reminded himself that it could not be true. Although cold-blooded, creatures like Caonarach came from the depths of the earth bringing with them an inbuilt hellfire. A spirit might be cool as it passed by, but a demon? That was something else. They came only to burn.
Silence.
That was the moment, and he clenched his clammy palms around the health of the golden sword, hoping that it's light might somehow cut through the darkness.
With his eyes still tight shut, he waited.
Waiting.
Waiting.
Waiting.
She struck!
The weight of the water dispersing with the only signal he would get of her Cobra like a lunge.
A second later and he would have been dead. As he spun with a blade in hand, they nicked each other; her toxic fangs were grazing across his shoulder and his blade clashing against scale. His eyes bolted open, better attuned to the darkness then, or perhaps it was that he is the sword were truly becoming one.
“I told you once foolish leprechaun! You cannot hurt these impenetrable...” her words faded away like drowned Mariners falling into the sea, and her hand extended downwards, slithering across her seductive form.
A substance of black, though possibly the darkest red he had ever seen, painted itself across her fingertips. Blood.
“But how?” she asked, with the first letter of something which looks like a finger on her face.
It was his turn to smile then.
“This,” he announced as he raised the sword, “the Claíomh Solais, ancestral Sword of Light, made up from the Four Treasures.”
Caonarach spat on the ground, a mix of blood and sickly phlegm.
“It matters not. You will still die tonight, and I promise it will be before the sun rises. I have had to play with you for a while little mouse, but you have scraped my scale; a most cruel thing it is to damage a woman's beauty.”
“As it was for you to destroy that of my wife with your actions. And any beauty you have in the past by the shadows which pulse in your veins. You should never have been released by a creature. Even I, hating with humans as I do, thanks to that great thanks for locking you in your watery cavern so long ago.”
“I suppose you think you can finish the job? Let us end with play, and dispense quickly.”
She raised on her tail, towering over him and lashing it so hard in the water about anyone could be forgiven for thinking a storm was brewing. Her arms raised into the air, and she let out a heart-piercing scream, one which sounded like tragedy incarnate.
It hurts to hear, more than even back of the banshee, and he clutched at his ears - still with the sword in his hand. He would sooner have let go of one of his own limbs that the Claíomh Solais.
After everything she had done, everything she had caused, she would not get away with it.
When the screeching stopped, there was a rumbling in the earth around him, and she backed up, half-submerged in the lake from which she came. In three places, forming a triangle around him, small mounds of dirt appeared to grow larger - like a mole coming to the surface. Grit from the under layer pushed forth, followed by stretched skin and bone fingers.
Fear gorta!
“You are a coward!” the first of the arms broke free from the land, and he hacked it off with a foul crunch, severing it completely from its owner.
She cackled, “no. I am not bound by your moral failings.”
“Morals are not failing.”
“I think that you will find me hot when it is your morals that have you feeling in your conquest. Morals mean nothing. Did they save you? Your children? Your wife?” As much as she tried to retain her sense of mocking, there was something more sinister burning behind her eyes. Yet Rowan had no desire to run - not this time, not until she was held in the ground with his sword planted through her chest.
The fear gorta rose, eternal hunger on their faces. The first two rows quicker than the last, seeing as it only had one arm with which to drag itself out of the land, and he took to those first.
They were fast, much more so than the ones he had encountered in the Quiet Place and the Kingdom.
He managed to dodge as one move towards him, striking a lurid red line across the chest of the other, which spewed what looked to be tar-like water from lungs filled when drowning. The stench alone was enough to make him fall back, where the third clasped him by the arm, shedding skin and making him howling of a night like an injured dog as it dragged itself up with him for leverage. Heat striped across his arm like a cattle brand on bare skin. The other two were approaching then, jaws snapping and purified flesh ready to infect any wound that would come. Not that they had any intention of letting him get away long enough for that to happen.
Caonarach giggled, eyes on the scene as she kept her hand over the scratch on her scales. Nothing hurts more than humiliation. Though at that moment, Rowan would have argued.
As blood left his body, it was replaced by adrenaline. He tore away from the gorta - skin mangled as he rolled and blood covering at least a third of his green jacket. On his second role in the left of the blade - he was slicing through the jugular!
One gorta down, and it fell like a bag of rocks being tossed into the ocean.
That left only two, one of which was injured.
And of course, Caonarach behind them.
He got to his knees, not quick enough to stand as the next gorta approached. Lifting his injured arm, he tried to block a swipe, the pain with bolted through him like lightning had him jolting away without control.
Fighting back the pain, quite literally as his tooth sunk into his lip, Rowan threw himself forward, impaling the fear gorta straight through the stomach with his blade coming out of the other side.
The creature groaned but pushed forwards, drawing closer and closer to him. So close that he thought his hands might reach it, yet he said, but if he pulled out his sword, he would yank the beast closer.
The only option was to push forwards; that meant being caught by its grasp. There wasn't enough time to think of another plan, especially not with the other getting to its feet even with one arm missing (an arm which threw itself across the floor with the last jolts of life prickling at its nerves).
Rowan thrust forward. The sword was buried deep within the gorta, and as it tried to wrap its arms around him, he took from his pocket one of the files from his set - of course with one missing, left as a lever at the Quiet Place.
He propelled the tool upwards, snapping it in the underside of the jaw. The creature tried to cry out, but all the time from its open was a torrent of blood and saliva. It garbled something, sharp nails closing around both of his shoulders. Whatever it was going to say was lost to the ether as Rowan twisted the metal, giving himself the most unholy shower of blood and bone.
The hands fell limp. Followed by the rest of its body.
He gave it a heave, causing it to topple into its ally and removing his sword as a grip the handle.
The only one left, weakened but enraged. Whether this was about the loss of a limb or at its eternal hunger, he could not say, they both seem to him perfectly practical reasons.
“I come for you after this one Caonarach!”
Her reply was a fierce glare, licked with malice. How dare he tear down so easily, not one but three of her most dreaded! How can a leprechaun do such a thing? How could one piece of metal cause her so much distress? If you were to take out the final gorta, she wouldn't do you have to cut him down herself. Never had toothpaste an enemy which could do damage to her scaly hide before. This, in itself, presented her with a dilemma. It seemed that she would have to give a quick death, something which lacked fun.
Furthermore, it would take away any opportunity to discover how to summon the sword for herself. She had met souls like this before, though; enough to know that bargaining was not an option and that they really submit to torture. It was always fun to try though.
At least her last minion of darkness was stronger than the others, even as an amputee.
She continued to watch; at a safe distance, naturally.
Snakes may be strong, but they are anything but stupid.
“Kill him and be done!” she shouted from the side-lin
es, perhaps the only being in the world which a gorta would listen to. It clawed for Rowan with its one remaining arm - fast enough to dodge his blade.
Without missing a beat, he came back at it again, metal aimed towards outside. With the speed of a shadow, it too moved away from this, forcing his back to Caonarach.
She tore in like hail beating down on new flowers, tearing the petals from their stand.
Her fangs broke through the junction between neck and shoulder, scraping a line into his collarbone.
“Yeaaa!” His entire body tensed. His fate was sealed. Her toxin was traveling through him. Even without feeling it, he could see by the way his veins turned black, extending from her still locked down jaw slowly outwards in all directions.
Each time he moved, her clamp became only deeper. Slightly angled back, her teeth would shred him like a wolf on a piece of mutton if he moved.
Staying still wasn't an option, though.
What was he do?
It seemed hopeless.
Where the fates really so cruel?
Would they let him come this far and get nothing in return?
Was it all worth it?
Had what he lost being for no reason?
What was the meaning of this pain?
Rowan started to lose his grip on the sword, eyelids growing heavier by the second. A gulp chased its way down his throat, and he tightened his fingers, thinking only that he must not drop the sword. His destiny had not yet been fulfilled.
He stabbed forward, catching the gorta in the air unexpectedly. As it hit the floor, more of its bones broke snapped under its weight.
Behind him, locked on tight and pumping ever more of her poison into his bloodstream, the specter of snake-like death herself remained, virtually unscathed.
His knees began to buckle. Had it's not been for her iron-like grip holding onto him like a bear trap, he would have slumped entirely. Many questions filtered through his mind.
