Day 18 of Midwinter, Sunrise

Mag Mór, Tir Tairngire

Annwn

The battlefield was a mess. Both sides had paused their charge at the unexpected arrival of Tadg and Brigid on the hill. Even the group of us in the middle of the field had turned to study the newcomers. Nuada’s mouth hung agape. I felt the effect of Brigid’s boons immediately, as my already sympathetic heart bent even more towards her presence.

But it was her companion that caught and held my attention. Tadg looked…off. His breastplate sat crooked on his torso, and his eyes were sunken in. He towered strangely over the tall Brigid, and even from this distance, I could see a strange darkness in his hands and arms, though the residual light from their sudden appearance lingered as a faint glow on the rest of his skin.

The Dagda galloped to Brigid’s position, raising his arm as a signal for his army to stand down. I watched as Nemain, too, signaled her fiacha at the very front of the Findrias forces to back down from the battle. The movement seemed to drain all her strength, and she wavered in her saddle, listing and falling to the side. Jumping from my own saddle, I ran to catch her before she could hit the ground. I was shocked at how light she felt in my arms.

Familiar black veins ran up the length of her neck. My breath caught in my throat as I realized the cause for her state–the lethal poison from the athame we had shared during the géis ritual, where the three Morrigan sisters and I had sworn a magical oath to defend and support each other.

Nemain had betrayed her oath when she took up arms against me. That she had done so to save the life of Brigid didn’t matter. Her bargain with Nuada, to lend her army to the fray if Brigid’s life was spared, was costing Nemain her own life.

“Now you understand,” she rasped, her eyes glassy.

I felt emotion catch in my throat as I searched for the right words to say. I hadn’t known her long, and since I had met her, we had disagreed fundamentally about our path through this war. But I could also understand now why she had so ardently defended the crown and withheld certain information from Gorias.

I could not agree with her decision to sacrifice hundreds of lives to save one, and I knew that I never would. And yet, I understood why Nemain, who had believed her sole purpose was to serve her family, and by extension, her kingdom, had made the choice she had, given her sense of duty and her unique beliefs of virtue.

She smiled faintly. “You were right, as it turns out. I am more than a sword. I am the fiery queen’s shield.”

Tears filled my eyes as I scrambled for a way to undo the damage of her wasted body, knowing all the while there was nothing I could do. But she would recover now, right, since she had called her forces back? I watched for the slightest improvement, seeing none. She lay limp in my arms, her dark eyes staring up into the sky.

I looked to the Findrias army, searching for Badb or Macha. Surely one of them knew a way to reverse the damage from the Mark of the Géis, which didn’t show up in my Power Rank notifications for some reason.

Thinking back to what I had done for Goibhniu inside of Tech Duinn, I recalled how I had used my Trance Healer boon. I knelt, still holding Nemain in my arms, and closed my eyes. The world seemed to fall quiet as I dropped expertly into a trance. Focusing on the flow of energy, I struggled to plug Nemain into the current as I had done with the smith.

A pain ripped through my body, and somewhere in the distance, I heard a scream from Macha. I forced more energy through, feeling it slide away from Nemain as if rejected. My Mark of the Géis flared, each attempt twisting against the weave. Nemain’s aura remained faint. I forced still more energy through, feeling myself grow weaker as my own aura guttered out. At last, I had no more to give, and I collapsed at her side, the trance broken.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

We lay on the ground facing each other. The sounds of the battlefield were still muted in my ears. Her eyes were calm and accepting. She gave me a faint smile before pushing herself up with a final effort.

“I still don’t like you,” she whispered, her voice rough but almost teasing. Her form rippled, feathers sprouting where flesh had been, and a heartbeat later, a raven took flight from my side, beating its wings into the morning sky.

I reeled, knowing that she had chosen her end. Macha would not survive from the poison of the athame. There had been nothing I could do to save her, and I knew there was nothing I could have said to change her mind about the path she believed to be right. I sat up, looking over the rest of the battlefield.

Tadg stood in front of his father, who had to look up to his son. Tadg was yelling at his father, but the words seemed muddled in my depleted brain. I watched as Nuada dropped to his knees, holding a suddenly grief-stricken face in his hands. I wondered what Tadg had said to him to affect him so, when none of our earlier words had made a dent.

Tadg was clearly angry, and I could see his body spasm as he spoke, almost as if he couldn’t properly control his own movements.

My mind fought to catch up with the voices around me. “Danu…” Nuada had said. My senses continued to slowly recover, just in time for me to hear the older man’s heartbroken voice.

“She switched her domain…Danu is now the keeper of Uffern.” I smacked the side of my head, certain I had heard wrong. The goddess of life, mother to Nuada and all of the Tuatha, was somehow now the goddess of death?

The pieces began to click into place in my mind. Danu must have switched domains, just as I had done with Cai. I pictured the man in Hy-Brasil with my mother, details from that night in the hills with our mounds flooding back to me.

Our father was indeed Donn, no longer the god of death. And the woman who had attacked us after the creation of our brú, the one who wore the blackness of night, had to have been Danu.

My mind reeling, I stared at Tadg and his father. Only moments ago, Nuada had seemed to be the embodiment of strength. Now, he rested on his knees, looking like a broken man. He shook his head, pleading with Tadg. I couldn’t hear all parts of their conversation, and found myself distracted again by Tadg’s continued lack of control of his body.

“There is something wrong with her,” I heard Nuada say. “She was different than I remember… Changed in some way.”

Tadg’s mouth opened, the sound of his voice changed, and unlike any I had ever heard before. It felt filled with disharmony and reminded me of something from an Exorcist movie. It sent chills up my spine.

FINALLY, SHE CAN JOIN US.

Those near us stopped what they were doing at the sound of the deep, malevolent voice. Tadg’s body continued to wrestle with itself, falling to the dirt. Nuada staggered to his son’s aid as Tadg writhed on the ground, his limbs flailing as he spasmed. He gently held his son’s neck.

“Brother,” I heard Cai say, worry evident in his voice. “Do you see that?”

I pulled myself to my feet, finally able to stand on my own, and turned to follow Cai’s gaze to the top of the mountain. Lava spilled down the side of the cliffs, and I felt the first rumblings of an earthquake rumble under my feet. But it was the other thing that streamed from the top of the volcano that worried me the most. A stream of ghostly spirits shot forth, enough to rival the combined might of both armies.

“The Bánánach have come… She has released them all,” Nuada said, still holding Tadg in his arms. He surveyed the battlefield as if seeing the thousands of living, breathing soldiers that he had gathered to Mag Mór for the first time. “What have I done?” he whispered.

I thought back to my earlier run-in with the Bánánach. Morias had been concerned that the spirits we had encountered on The Stern Beauty were so far removed from a battlefield, where they normally lurked in small but deadly numbers. Now, it seemed that the entirety of the pits of Uffern were spilling onto the plains and coming straight for all of us.

Pandemonium swept through the ranks. Thousands of soldiers broke into panic, crushed beneath the weight of ancient whispers about the Bánánach and the death they always heralded.

Cai’s voice boomed over the mayhem as he called his army to his side. In seconds, he had the Fomorians, each brandishing a cold, iron blade, organized at the front line, ahead of pale-faced changelings, fae, and Tuatha. The Fomorians were the only ones that could stop the creatures, and my brother had seen it and acted.

I found Lir on the battlefield and rushed to him, rustling through my pockets as I ran. I yanked out Fern’s Shell of Promise and the flask I had filled with the salt water of Tir fo Thuinn.

“I need to call in that favor now,” I said to the god of the sea, who smiled gravely and activated his most powerful boons.