Talyesin's Tales

Anna steps forward.

“Now Pandy, do you really want to do this?” she asks in this very calm, rational voice that’s a hell of a lot creepier than the demon lolita and her pyrotechnic goons.

“I’m not talking to you, Kimble!” Pandy snarls, and flames flare out of her eyes. She turns to Ace and she’s all sweet and ... Okay, she’s still a demon. But she has a sweet look on her face. “I was talking to Acey here.”

“Pandy.” Darklight’s voice gets all hard and no nonsense. I look at Ragdoll. She looks at me. We sort of instinctively position ourselves so going back to back will take only a split second, while keeping our eyes on the showdown going on in front of us.

“Stay out of this Kimble, I’m warning you.”

“No hon, she’s warning you,”Ace smirks. He crosses his arms and cocks his head that arrogant way he has.

“Pandy, you’ll stop this nonsense and allow us to pass,” Darklight says quietly, “or I’ll call Naomi and tell her where to find you.”

It’s interesting watching someone with blood red skin go pale. Her face sort of lightens to this unhealthy dark pinkish colour.

“You wouldn’t.”

“No? I could summon her right now, if you prefer.”

Pause. It drags out just long enough for me to start feeling that old familiar twitch, when Pandy pouts, “Oh, fine.”

The flame-goons snuff out. The little cavern is suddenly really dark, and we hear Pandy say “I’ll just have to play with Acey another time.”

By the time Ace has his card-light lit, and Anna has the little ball of light floating by her head, the cave is empty. Just us and the stone walls.

Darklight looks at Ace.

“You never told me you and Pandy had ... a history.”

“Yeah, well...” Ace is blushing under that strip mask of his. He rubs the back of his neck and Anna sort of smirks at him.

“Can we get going please?” Ragdoll asks.

“Right. Anna, take the lead?” I add.

Darklight nods and we follow. Ace is in back. I look at him.

“Naomi?”

“She’s a bad ass demon hunter out on the West Coast,” he explains.

“And Darklight could... what, teleport her here?”

“No, that was probably a bluff.” Ace shrugs and grins at me. “At least, I think it was.”

We keep heading into the caves under Downtown. After maybe another half hour, we start seeing that yellow-green glow of bioluminescent moss, so Ace powers down his card-light, and Anna dims her light-ball, so our eyes can adjust to the dimmer light.

Up ahead, someone giggles. We stop.

After a couple of seconds, nothing happens.

“Okay,” I say.

“Swell, giggling in the dark,” Ragdoll says.

“Just the UnSeelie playing their little games,” Darklight explains. “Wait... let me just...” She waves her hands and mumbles something to herself, then she steps up to Ace and brushes her fingers in front of his eyes. He blinks a couple of times.

“A simple spell to counter any glamours that might be sent our way,” she explains, stepping up to Ragdoll, who nods. Anna brushes her fingers in front of Ragdoll’s eyes, then steps toward me. I nod, and she does it again. There’s a sort of... twinkly cold sensation in my eyes, but that’s all.

We head out again. Ragdoll keeps shooting me looks. Finally I say, “What?”

“I’m just not used to seeing your eyes when you’re in costume,” she smiles.

It’s true. My goggles got smashed by Junkernaut’s explosion, and I don’t have a backup set. Transparent polarized aluminum non-distorting lenses don’t exactly come cheap, so all I have is holes in my mask.

“You like it?” I ask.

“I dunno,” she smirks. “You always look at my boobs this much?”

And once again the full face mask successfully thwarts the blush that’s burning my cheeks.

“Well... yeah?” I answer.

“Hey lovebirds,” Ace calls quietly. “We’re here.”

We catch up with the other two and look out into a huge cavern. Part natural, part dug out of the bedrock. Buildings of every shape - boxes, mushrooms, pyramids, trees - cover the floor, some of the walls, and even drip down from the ceiling. There are a few fires, but most of the light comes from the glowing moss.

And even from here, we can see the place is crawling with people. Hundreds of them.

“You surely can pick ‘em,” I say to Ace.

“Yeah.”

“So?” Ragdoll asks. “Now what?”

And everyone’s looking at me.

“What?”

“Nothing comes out of the Court without the Court’s approval,” Anna says.

“Okay...”

And still, everyone’s looking at me.

“This was your idea, pal,” I say to Ace.

“Yeah... only I wasn’t expecting there to be a whole city down here.”

“Swell,” I shake my head. “Can we expect them to act civilized if we do?”

“It’s possible,” Anna says. “It’s also possible they’ll kill us and eat our flesh, hopefully in that order.”

“Great. Okay, here’s what we do: Walk in, bold as brass, don’t mess with anyone, ask to talk to the head guy down here. What is he, anyway, Mayor of UnSeelietown?”

“Prince,” Ace says. “Or Princess.” He pauses. “Squirrely... I had no clue the Court was so big.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I say. “You’re buying the drinks when we get back topside.”

He nods and smiles.

“You’re really planning on just walking in there?” Ragdoll asks.

“Hon, the Defenders of Justice in their prime couldn’t clear this cave out. There’s hundreds of folks down there, and most of them have some sort of magic. What choice do we have?”

She doesn’t like it, but she nods.

So we climb down the cliff, and head into the UnSeelie Court.

There’s people with animal heads, huge ugly people, small ugly people. They all stare at us like we’re the freaks as we walk past. A woman with a pig snout and tiny bat wings growing out her shoulders grabs a child with similar features and pulls it into a house built to look like a big boot. Three old ladies with hair like seaweed and pointed teeth are sitting on rocking chairs in front of a house that looks like gingerbread, and they all point and laugh as we pass.
There’s a couple of huge guys coming our way. I mean, huge. Twenty, thirty feet tall. Dressed in furs. Both bald.

“Be cool, guys,” I say quietly.

“Well, well, well,” one of the giants says in a barely understandably Cockney accent. “Wassall iss enn?”

“Looking for the Court, boss,” I say.

“Izzat roight?” the other giant says. “Makes yoo fink tha Court’s looken fa yoo?”

“What makes you think we’re going to give away Court business to a couple of street thugs?” Darklight says in that cold flat voice of hers.

“Fugs? Us?” one laughs.

“Now get out of our way and maybe we’ll forget who delayed us on Court business,” she continues.

Now, normally this would be funny. She’s like five foot tall, staring up at these two giants, maybe five, six times her height. But something about her makes it seems like she’s looking down her nose at them. Like an prim schoolteacher who’s found two bullies smoking behind the gym. I’d laugh, except that would probably wreck her spell.

Finally one of the giants swallows and says, “Yeh... roight.” He starts walking past us. “Ain’t enough meat on ‘em ta make a propah meal any’ow...”

“Good work, Darklight,” I say when they’re gone.

“Thanks,” she smiles.

We find the Court. It’s the biggest building, set in the middle of town. There’s a bunch of people wandering around looking mean, all of them with blood red dreadlocks and pointed teeth. Some of the older ones are wearing kilts.

“Redcaps,” Ace mutters. “Bad news.”

“I’ll keep it in mind.”

We start up the stairs to the Court. Inside the huge double doors there’s a bit of a nightmare happening. Imagine fairies, goblins, trolls, giants. Imagine an S&M club. Put them in a blender. Add absinthe, mescaline, and LSD, and set on puree. All of them bumping and grinding to music that sounds like someone putting a harpsichord, a pipe organ, and a couple of electric guitars in a thresher. Along one wall there’s a table dripping with fresh meat, roasted meat, boiled meat, all manner of rotting vegetables and fruit, and silver goblets filled with dark red liquid. I’m not particularly interested in remembering anything else from the table, but it’s a little hard to avoid looking at a platter of eyeballs all staring back at me.

There’s a couple sitting together at one end of the room. They’re surrounded by UnSeelie. They’re all of them watching us approach.

“Welcome,” the man shouts over the music. He’s wearing an impeccably tailored three piece suit, with slits cut in it all over to let these sharp brown points stick out. They also stick out of his face.

“I am the Prince of Thorns.”