Pawla the Magnificent and Wise

They emerged from the lake bedraggled, cold, but alive, and, in Marci's case, feeling better than she could remember in a long, long time.

After resurfacing with Olaf, Marci had managed, with a frankly obscene amount of repair charms and a bucket-load of magic, to pull the shattered boat more or less back together. Combined with a whole host of repurposed shields she had managed to stop the boat sinking as they'd made their last third of the journey to the large island where the Sorceress of the Bog, 'Pawla' lived.

Like everything in the Feywilde, the island was weird. Some of the trees were weirdly animated like the other examples they'd seen across the lake, but others appeared to be made of wool, yarn, and in one place, fish that were all fused together and which were gulping at the air around them.

The interior of the island rose away from the lake, and a zig-zagging path wound its way back and forth across a steep grassy slope which vanished up into mist.

"The Sorceress' tower lies ahead," said Comrade Hugo. "I shall wait for you here, Comrades."

"I am not a Comrade!" said Anke. "I want no part in your deviant ways!"

Comrade Hugo shrugged. "I forgive you, then Ms. Anke. I know what it is like to be so consumed with false consciousness—so deep in ideology you cannot see your way clear."

"I'm the one 'deep in ideology!?'" said Anke. "You- your entire town just got brainwashed!"

Normally, Marci would have sniped at her, but not only was she making an effort to be more responsible and kind to the crazed elf, she was simply feeling too good about herself to really care. Sure, she knew that it wasn't settled, but Olaf had kissed her. Enthusiastically. Lovingly. And she'd seen his fantasy, he was just as into her as she was into him. And, she'd have to wait until they were out of the Feywilde to sort things out, but he wanted her. She knew it.

Marci went to move off, but Olaf's 'ahem' caught her.

"What?" she said.

He pulled a comb out of his small, enchanted satchel.

"Hair, Marci," he said. "Hair. We're meeting a powerful archfey, do you really want to go there looking like you just crawled out a lake?"

Marci conjured a shield, modified so it came out flat and reflective. Huh, she supposed that was fair, she did look extremely bedraggled. Had she brushed her hair since she'd revived in this body? She couldn't remember. Probably, that was probably something she had done.

Ten minutes, lots of swearing, and a few scrubbing spells later, Marci and the others were looking more or less presentable. Well, Olaf had somehow managed to look dashing even beforehand, but that was just a burden that the gorgeous kattdjur man had to bear-

The memory of his lips on hers, strong arms wrapped around her as they hung in the inky void, body pressed as close as their armour and clothes could allow, his movements just as needful and intense as her own-

She shook herself. No, bad Marci. This was not the time to indulge in what-might-be and sexy fantasy- well, no, not a fantasy—that had actually happened, just half an hour earlier, but that wasn't the point. She was about to meet an archfey, a likely capricious and powerful being who would doubtlessly want something in return for any wisdom she had. Marci needed to be on her metaphorical toes, and push away those burning thoughts that kept on trying to resurface until she could talk it out with Olaf or else have an ice-cold shower.

Presentable, they made their way up the path, working their way up through the eerie mist that rapidly obscured the lake. Up and up and up they went, walking for almost twenty minutes before the mist finally started to bleed off, revealing brilliant sunshine and a blue sky strewn with squiggly, wispy white clouds.

The grassy slope levelled out, growing gentler and gentler until it reached the roots of a great, brown-barked tree that was surrounded by a somewhat mad, but very bright garden of multicoloured flowers, and a root that had somehow been grown into the shape of stairs, which snaked up and around before reaching a doorway in the side of the tree itself, painted a jolly blue colour with stars.

As a wizard who had once owned many similarly bedecked hats, Marci approved of the colour scheme. Damn, she should get another hat. She'd sold her best one to pay for a bottle of Cointreau, but she was rich now. A wizard should always have an appropriately floppy, wide rimmed hat. And it might go some ways to take away from the burning eyes of evil, make her more approachable…

'Hey, Jolanda,' she said splitting her attention back to the Dreadfort and touching the mind of her crazed, demon-loving lieutenant. 'Can you get someone to buy me-'

Marci immediately recentred herself and put her hands over her eyes, as if that could somehow get the image that was burned into her mind of Jolanda in the throes of passion with Rafferty of all people.

'Ah, Mistress? Did you, ah, wish something of me?'

'Never mind!' sent Marci back quickly as she could, feeling her cheeks burn. 'Talk later!'

Marci wasn't a prude; there were many men and women who could attest to that, but there were certain things that even a worldly and mature fairy like herself was not ready to have beamed straight into her mind. At least Jolanda was making connections, that had to be healthy — right? And Rafferty… well, Okay, Rafferty was a bloodthirsty maniac, but he was a competent and reliable bloodthirsty maniac…

Had her standards fallen? It felt like her standards had fallen.

Marci shuddered.

"Hey, you OK?" said Olaf.

"Oh, uh, yeah, just… just thinking about wizard hats," she said, realising she had come to a dead stop and started to drift to the ground.

Olaf gave her a sceptical look as she beat her wings harder and resumed her usual height of above everyone's except Tissa before approaching the brightly painted door and raising a hand to knock.

Before her fists could tap on the wood, however, the door opened of its own accord, and a perfectly reasonably sized being stared up at her.

Standing perhaps three and a half feet, the 'Sorceress of the Bog' looked like a large upright housecat: white fur, bright golden eyes, and long, slightly mad looking whiskers. Although Marci would be the first to argue that height had no bearing on anything, somehow she'd been expecting the first archfey she'd ever met to be more… impressive? Possessing of gravitas?

Behind the woman, she caught sight of an utterly mad room that seemed to be a cross between a library, a kitchen, and some kind of climbing gym, with ropes and boards and platforms connected randomly here and there. At the centre there was also a large pod, into which several fishing rods were dangling lines.

"Who is this then?" said the Sorceress. "Fairy? Hmph."

"Um, hello, I'm Marci," said Marci. "Are you Sorceress 'Pawla?'"

"We are," sniffed the cat-like woman. "What does fairy want?"

"I, ah, I'd like to talk to you about Shardforts, and… Shardkeepers," said Marci. "And, um, and the 'Far Ones,' if you know about that too."

The cat-woman made a yowling sound and batted at her with a paw. "We are busy! Go away!"

"Please," said Marci. "This is- this is really important."

"We already told you what we knew!" yowled Pawla.

"No, you didn't-"

"Not you, you!" said Pawla. "Shardkeepers." She pointed at Saoirse. "Looked like that one. Go ask her."

"Wait, Aisling?" said Marci. "Aisling came here? To you?"

"Meow!" complained the Sorceress, gesturing backwards to what might have been the fishing lines. "We're busy!"

"Please, what did you tell her?"

"We told you!" yowled the archfey, stomping her adorably chunking brown boots. "We told you!"

"Aisling left no record of what you said," said Marci. "And she, well, she vanished—I sort of… 'inherited' her Shardfort. Accidentally! I'm not- I'm not evil!"

Sorceress Pawla grumbled and batted at Marci again. "Fine!" she said. "What have you got for us then, hmm?"

"Um, got for you?" said Marci. "Well, um…" She patted down her pockets. "I don't really know."

"Pah! Then why would we tell you!?" said Pawla.

"At last, someone reasonable," said Anke. "It's good to know that even in the depths of this mad place there is at least a skerrick of real philosophy!"

"I have… err," said Marci, rummaging in her pockets and pulling out the silver wand Jolanda had gotten her along with the rest of her armour. "I have this."

"Hmm…" said the fey, peering at it, then shaking her head. "No! Boring!"

"Dammit," muttered Marci, glancing at the others. "Do you have anything?"

"I fail to see why I should dip into my own personal resources when I am merely a sub-contractor," said Anke, unhelpful as ever.

"I've got… some hard tack?" said Olaf, holding up a block on unappetising looking rations.

The archfey waved a paw, and with a burst of incredibly subtle magic it was suddenly in her hand. She sniffed at it, then hissed and threw it away.

"No! Yuck!" said the archfey.

"Can't say I blame you really," said Olaf. "Can you tell us what you like, at least?"

"She's a cat-" began Marci.

"Marci! You can't say that!" said Olaf at the same time that the archfey hissed.

"We are Grimalkin!" yowled the archfey.

"Oh, err, sorry," said Marci. "I meant, um… do you like shiny things, Sorceress?"

The 'Grimalkin' narrowed her eyes, and Marci could almost feel the withering look she was getting from Olaf behind her.

"Maybe we do," said the sorceress slowly.

"Great," said Marci, rummaging in her pockets. "I should have some coin here… or, I thought I did." She came up empty. Which wasn't that unusual for her, but she supposed that she hadn't actually really needed to carry money since she became a Shardkeeper. She had people for that now.

Dammit, she was a bad person, wasn't she?

"Anke, you must have money—that's your kink," said Marci. "Give her some."

Anke narrowed her eyes.

"I'll pay you back double?" said Marci.

Those were, apparently, a rather effective incantation, because the elf's eyes lit up. And she immediately produced a very large bag of gold.

"So, the terms of the contract, to be clear, are that any amount of gold I give away, you will double?" said Anke, her eyes flashing like a predators.

Marci frowned. "Err, that… is what I said," said Marci, some small trepidation entering her voice as Anke began producing smaller bags of coins from all sorts of weird and wonderful places on her person. "Wait, I don't think I need that much-"

"You said! You said!" said Anke excitedly, taking off her shoe and pulling several gold-coins from inside.

Did she walk around with those there? That couldn't be comfortable. And did Anke carry around her life savings on her, or something? Hadn't she heard of banks?

"What about objects?" said Anke, pulling out a necklace. "This is twelve carat! It's worth at least forty marks-"

"Anke, I- don't need that much stuff," said Marci. "And-"

"What about this?" said Saoirse, holding up a ball of wool with two knitting needles in it.

Did Saoirse knit? When Marci had first met her, she would have never have guessed that, but somehow, now that she knew her, that seemed pretty on-brand. And she did wear knitted cardigans all the time that didn't seem like things that were easy to get in the underworld where most fashion tended towards the skimpy and/or very evil.

The archfey's eyes lit up and she waddled forward, a smile on her face as she took the ball of wool from Saoirse and immediately began to play with it, tangling it in her claws.

"We like it!" said the archfey, chattering her teeth in her equivalent of what might have been laughter as she waddled back into her house.

"No! No!" shouted Anke, stumbling forward, arms full of cash and valuables that had been secreted on her person. "Wait! Please! You don't understand! It was a one hundred percent return! I was going to make so much money!"

The archfey ignored her, and moved to a chair by the pond and sat down, continuing to play with the wool.

Marci moved after her, assuming that she was intended to enter. The others moved after her too, but the archfey's eyes snapped up. "No! Only wizards allowed!" she said, gesturing at Marci, and then at Saoirse. "Only them!"

"That… doesn't feel very fair," said Olaf.

"Indeed, we would say it is discrimination" said Tissa.

The archfey yowled at them.

Anke huffed. "What about me? I'm basically a wizard anyway-"

The archfey hissed, and Marci tried, and didn't quite entirely succeed, in suppressing a snort of laughter.

"We'll just… wait outside then?" said Olaf.

Marci, and a somewhat worried Saoirse entered the insane hollowed out tree slash wizard tower slash climbing gym: Marci flapping over to a stool by the pond, Saoirse sort of hovering around looking uneasy.

"So, uh… you know about Shardforts?" said Marci after a few moments. "The 'Far Ones?' There was a troll, he said I have 'their touch on me.'"

"Yes," said Pawla, wrinkling her nose and making her whiskers pull back and away. "Covered in it. Disgusting."

Well, that was worrying. "Alright, so they made the Shardforts? But… who are they? What do they want?"

"Far Ones do not want," she said, shaking her head. "They hunger."

"And… what does that mean?" said Marci.

The archfey made a grumbling sound, but lowered the ball of wool. One of her ears flicked.

"We only explain once; so, listen! Long ago, when we were a kitten," she said. "Was a war in your realm—invasion. Courts were fighting; Queens distracted; Green Wardens failed—Far Ones broke through the Outer Gates. Feywilde was too bright for Them, but They saw your world, hungered for it—wanted to consume its energy, souls of its people. They made hooks: Shardforts, to open the way; then, once open, tried to consume Middle Realms."

"But they lost, right?" said Marci.

"Far Ones don't lose; Far Ones wait, try again, and again, and again—forever," said the archfey, shaking her head. "Pushed back, at great cost; long enough that your world, ravaged and shadow of its former self, forgot—short lived ones always forget."

"Hold on, but my people aren't short lived," said Marci. "Even now, we can still live to over a thousand."

Pawla yowled. "Stupid winged ones weren't there yet! Only left after Three Hundred and Seventeenth Court War! No interruptions!"

"Oh, right, sorry," said Marci.

The 'grimalkin' chattered her teeth. "As we were saying: long time passed. Then, not long ago, demons found the Shardforts; now they- now you unwittingly lay groundwork for Their return. Just like before." The archfey shook her head. "Mortals never learn."

"Wait, what?" said Marci, trying to translate from the archfey's strange way of speaking. "What do you mean by that? That we're 'laying the groundwork?"

"Shardforts give great power—you know this, yes? So, so tempting, few can resist: they devour, weaken world, metaphysical defences: enough damage, then Far Ones can get all the way in," said the archfey. "They will return, not long now—no, no, very soon. Your world not strong enough to resist; divided, fighting. Demons given into desire for power, or too afraid of Shardkeepers to fight back. Was dwarves last time, but happened before, will happen again. Greed and fear, Far Ones know weaknesses well. But this time, you will fall; Middle Realms will be consumed." She shook her head. "Not strong enough. Not strong enough. Weak." Her nose twitched. "Stupid."

Marci's mind reeled at this new information. She'd known, of course, that Shardforts ripped energy from the living world around them—that was why she was now so powerful and had slain a massive lake serpent with such overwhelming power that normally there would have been a song or two composed about it. But if what the archfey was saying was true, then that power, the might of the Shardkeepers, was secondary compared to the fort's true purpose, which was to drain and damage the world enough for whatever these 'Far Ones' really were to make it inside.

As Pawla had put it, in a rather confusing way, it was a trap—one that played upon two of the greatest motivators of all: greed and fear.

Greed: how many wizards would turn down the kind of power Marci had stumbled into? Even if most were good and moral people, it would only take one in a hundred.

Fear: a Shardkeeper's life was bound to the fortress—she could still feel the damage that Gillian had inflicted, cracks on her soul. Marci wasn't the most moral person, perhaps, but she wasn't the worst either, and she had battled against her own people to save herself and the ones she loved.

It was perfect. No one would have tolerated these world-devouring engines if they just showed up and started wrecking the world autonomously, but use them to give that power to a greedy little mortal or demon? Bind them body and soul to it? Well, then very nature would put them into conflict with the world around them, even if they had the best of intentions—like Marci—and they would fight tooth and nail to defend the very object that was ushering in the doom of their world.

"But- but there must be some way to stop them coming!" said Marci. "What if- what if I destroyed the other Shardforts? Disentangled my soul and then wrecked mine?"

The archfey sniffed and turned to look at Marci. "Possible, work for a while—Shardforts regenerate eventually, but not for thousands of years," she said. "The other one, like the demon there, she wanted to try—must have failed."

"Wait, you mean Aisling wanted to destroy the other Shardkeepers?" said Marci. "But- but she was a monster, a-"

Marci cut herself off before she said demon. Aisling had been a succubus, like Saoirse. And even if Aisling had been a documented murderous monster, if Marci had learnt anything over the past few weeks it was that the line between demon and not-demon was not as clear cut as she had thought. Aisling had been a terrible person, but a person all the same—she wouldn't have wanted her world destroyed either, and if she had learned what Marci just had, then she would have taken steps to try and thwart the Far Ones' plans.

Probably without giving up her own power, but she wouldn't have sat idle, and she wouldn't have failed to grasp the gravity of what the archfey told her. Marci had seen Aisling's impressive library, workshop, and ritual room—it was clear that the succubus had been no dullard.

The archfey shrugged. "We don't know," she said. "Maybe realised that Shardforts were wrong, concerned." She scowled. "Very rude; you are nicer."

Pawla got up and waddled over to her bookcase and took out a book, and then a map, and brought it back over to Marci. It was entitled 'Þæt Ende Wæpen,' written in almost the same script as Altisch, with a few characters that had fallen out of fashion, but which wasn't immediately intelligible. There were ways to magically translate script even without a reference or dual dictionary, although it was slow and tedious work.

"Here," she said, giving it to Marci. "We give one like this to Aisling too: book written by those who fought Far Ones. Information: strengths, weaknesses. Maybe helps, probably not enough."

She offered the map next, which showed the Middle Realms, although most of the cities weren't in the right spots, and it was marked with more unintelligible words.

"Didn't give this though, only found in attic last month when looking for mice. This map, old cities from before war with Far Ones, before Middle Realms fell and forgot," said Pawla. She tapped one of the places, deep in the dividing mountains at the far west of the continent marked as Hēodþonloc. "Here, armoury and manufactory: made weapons. Maybe something that works against Far Ones, maybe against Shardkeepers?"

The archfey went back to playing with the wool, leaving Marci staring at the map with a sense of great trepidation: as if she had suddenly realised she was mere steps from a yawning chasm that she had been walking towards her whole life, unawares. Worse, she was not only walking in the footsteps of someone that had already failed, but the stakes were no longer 'maybe stop an invasion of the south if you can' and 'stop being a Shardkeeper.' No, now the stakes were 'find a way to stop the end of the world.'

Marci gulped.

No pressure.