Rebirth and Second Chances

The Leanan and I had not been transported along with the castle. Instead, we found ourselves in one of the planes that connected to Limbo. A place straddling the dimensional matrix, a point between Underhill and the real world, and the place where the death energy was concentrated. I wasn't worried about being trapped. I could use my connection with Tia, Queen of Cats, to escape even from this place, or open a [Portal] to Summerlands.

Tia's ability as Queen of Cats to transition between dimensions was absolute. There was no way to block or guard against her ability. Just like mortal cats that could go anywhere, get into anything, the Queen of Cats had that same ability on a much grander scale. As my bonded companion, the connection that linked us together would ignore the strange dynamics of Limbo and allow us to remain in contact.

The changes to the Leanan, though, were drastic. Being cut off from the Changeling that she had been torturing, forcing it to die over and over, and bereft of the magic contained within the Nexus pool, she had become a Banshee. Sidhe did not have Sirens, but we did have Banshee, and a Leanan Sidhe that lost the connection to the emotion that came from bonding with another person became Banshee, a tormented spirit housed in Sidhe flesh.

The creature was devoid of every emotion but anger and madness. The Leanan's beauty had faded as she transitioned into a caricature of what she once had been. A creature as much emotional vampire as Sidhe monster, without any real intellect to tide or stem the insanity that had been barely controlled.

The power of illusion and glamour that all Sidhe possessed was used to enhance the monstrous changes her metamorphosis into Banshee had made, adding to the stark contrast and horrific changes.

What color her skin, hair, and eyes used to have, had faded, until there was nothing left but shades of greys, patches of shadow to highlight the distorted facial features. Features that seemed to absorb shadow, culminating in an open maw of void where her mouth used to be.

Her hair transformed from burnished bronze locks to clusters of tentacles, rows of squid-like appendages that framed the shadowy face that was contorted into rigors of anger. Her teeth sharpened, becoming serrated, mimicking the Slaugh. Gnashing protrusions that only increased the horror of the void like maw they surrounded. And her nails grew into talons, each laced with poisons so potent that one scratch was enough to infect anyone attacked with a pathogen that would convert them into Banshee.

A Banshee's instinct was to lash out and attack. Their self-control was destroyed when they transformed, and because the Leanan Sidhe had spent who knows how long draining magic directly from a Nexus node, her power was more advanced than even a Banshee Queen.

Her wails and screams were the opening salvos of a battle using psychic energies. She could no longer siphon emotions from a bonded companion, but that didn't stop her from broadcasting anger. As a Banshee, she lacked the control to affect strategic attacks, her insanity pushed her beyond those limits. Ironically, her anger and insanity were the closest she came to experiencing true emotion.

Our battlefield took place betwixt and between. Not completely immersed in Underhill, not bound by the laws of reality, so there was no physical impediment to our battle. Her screams of rage and psychic attacks were met with illusion and glamour on my part. Illusion and glamour that were steeped within the astral, made manifest because of our psychic ability.

I could have left, abandoned her to this place in limbo for all eternity, but I decided to stand and fight. Not because I had any sense of compassion or empathy for her, but because I had a Sithern seed that needed to be planted.

The Sidhe had always used strong emotion from battles or fertility rituals to ripen the seeds, to give them that final boost of tangibility that allowed them to finally spout. This place would be the perfect place to plant a seed. The only issue was deciding which seed I should select. Irvin had harvested and gifted me a seed from his Sithern, one that had roots that connected to the World Tree, and I had a stock of seeds from the Tuatha de Danann Sithern I had created, so I had a choice of which to plant here.

Irvin's Sithern was created using ritual magic and fertility energies during its formation. He had invoked a [Revel] that had restored his fertility and those that participated in an orgy. Children had been conceived, and the direction of his Sithern was rooted in that fertility. He had awoken a Sithern based on life, creation, and beginnings.

My Sithern had used the blood from a battle as I had fought Princess Liotonis when she had moved to protect her Selkie son. That battle had turned the ocean waters that lapped the shore of my Sithern red with blood, and the energy from that fight had shaped how my Sithern was formed and grown.

One was attuned to life. One to death. I decided I was going to use this opportunity, this fight with the Banshee, to mix the two. It was an easy decision. Irvin's seed attuned with life would be sprouted and powered with the blood and death of a Banshee Queen. It would be the first Sithern created on this planet, the first Sithern created in this Universe, and I hoped to strike a balance.

Life and death were a dance of possibility and potential. You could not have one without the other, and my goal was to give this first Sithern on Urt a foundation of potential that would allow it to survive, for the roots to reach out to the World Tree that framed the multi-verse and restore a branch of that Tree to this world.

I was mindful of my location, this place in between allowing protections and possibilities that would not be found anywhere else. By using this opportunity to plant the seed here, the resulting Sithern would be anchored in three dimensions. Underhill, Urt, and Limbo. That would create a buttress of protection that would require a three-pronged attack to assail the walls of the Sithern that blossomed.

To defeat this Sithern, you would have to defeat it on Urt, in Underhill, and in Limbo. That defensive ability would be shared with the World Tree that the Sithern would form.

Zeus and Odin might be able to marshal an attack on Urt, even in Limbo, but they were proscribed from entering Underhill. Even before [Fairy] returned to the world, [Laws] had existed that forbid any but those the Sidhe gave permission to enter. Those [Laws] proclaimed that each God had Authority only over Their Domain, and the Arbiter that maintained those [Laws] would have kept them from entering.

Without the ability to attack and destroy the Sithern on all three fronts, it became unassailable, and if it managed to form a connection with the multi-verse World Tree, this world's World Tree that would sprout could never be destroyed. A Sithern and World Tree inviolable and invulnerable to all attacks would give the Sidhe a base of power, a staging area where they could retreat to or attack from, even if the rest of the land they controlled was lost.

The Banshee continued her assault by screaming and releasing psychic assaults. She augmented those attacks by attempting to land a hit that would scratch me. The venom in her claws was so potent that even at my rank, if scratched, I would transform and become a Banshee instantly. There would be no time for my healing or regenerative abilities to protect me.

I was adroit enough at fighting to keep from being scratched by those talons, but each parry and counterattack on my part was only a stalling action. The power from the Nexus that she had already claimed was still hers to control. It gave potency to her attacks far beyond what she should have been able to unleash. In addition, she was able to use the magic she had stolen to fuel her regenerative ability to a god-like level. Every time I managed to destroy an arm, or cut off her talons, they would regrow.

It was the combination of fighting in the psychic and physical realm that made this battle so much harder than I'd expected. My will was almost unassailable, but that didn't mean I could ignore her mental assaults. My only recourse to those attacks was to respond using illusion and glamour. Those were the only abilities I had that were steeped in the psychic.

Each time she would release a Banshee wail, I would respond with a glamour that was created and depended heavily on emotion. It was the strangest dance of death I'd ever engaged in. Her attack countered with illusions of some of the most emotional moments of my life.

It wasn't until I created the illusion where I met Danu, Cyronax, and Beleros that my attempts at using glamour as a weapon began to make a difference. That recreation of the moment they as the Divine [Blessed] me. That moment when they created the Cernunnos, the first new Sidhe to be given life since the Tuatha de Danann had embraced [Sleep]. Those moments were wondrous, filled with hope and possibility.

Moments I cherished.

For the Banshee, they were anathema.

They didn't do any noticeable harm to the creature, but they did have an effect. Each time I released an illusion steeped in the Divine, that illusion would stun her. She was frozen for seconds. I wasn't sure if her response to those emotions was pain, despair, or desire, and I didn't care. She was made vulnerable while that illusion existed, and I took those seconds of vulnerability to act.

A mental twitch to my [Ring of Hidden Depths] was all I needed to remove the Sithern Seed I planned on planting. A burst of speed and strength and my hand was embedded within her chest. The seed released, and her heart subsumed as I gave the seed the command to grow.

That command, powered by the magic that the Banshee had stolen, allowed the seed to use her body as both fertilizer and potting soil. The Sithern woke, putting down roots that branched. We were in a place betwixt and between, but that made no difference. The Sithern was able to take advantage of our location, roots growing to embrace Underhill, limbo, and reality.

The Banshee was consumed as the Sithern grew. Her life force and the Nexus magic she contained the sacrifice to give the newly planted seed life and power.

Limbo reverberated, fighting the connection the Sithern was establishing. It was a place of lost dreams and hopes. It was an unending tide of loneliness. A place where spirits roamed, lost to time, fate, and life.

The Sithern was the antithesis of Limbo. A place of life, growth, possibilities. And despite the defensive measures the realm activated to deny the Sithern purchase, it lost. The smallest fraction of that place of nothingness was anchored by a seed that sprouted and the unfurling tether of a World Tree reaching to connect with the primogenitor of all World Trees.