Throwing Curses to the Air

The Never Ending Quest - Episode 8752

Astra, princess of Aquilaria was on her guard. Too many things didn't make sense. Too many things didn't match. She turned to this stranger, Simon the Anchorite's friend, her erstwhile rescuer, and spoke.

"But you were in the tree for many years yourself. How is it that you don't seem drained?"

Aethir MacFionn's brow furrowed, and he frowned, replying.

"Do you always ask this many questions? I don't know how much time I'll have before they realize that they missed me, and I've taken you. Trust me, you don't want to feel the force of one of the Unseelie Court's Wild Hunts. It's not anyone's idea of pleasant"

The warrior woman's lips pursed in contemplation.

"I have to ask these questions," she said, "because they're clearing my mind...and you don't want that...do you, wretched half-man?"

"I don't know what you mean," the bearish man shrugged, and again, his image wavered.

"There's no more need to keep up this ruse, imp. I'm on to you. Now release me."

A twinkle shone behind Aethir's eyes, and Astra's world swam about her yet again...


The warrior woman awoke to the pungent odor of smelling salts being wafted underneath her nose. She was in her bedchambers in Aquilaria, surrounded by trusted servants, as well as the spae-woman of the nearby village, who was the one tending to her with herbs and charms. She knew all of them, and trusted them.

"Hush child," the spae-woman said, pressing a damp cloth to your forehead, "I'm a-feared ye will not be making the journey to the Southern Caves after all. Your father was ill-suited to the notion of you going in the first place, and though we've cured ye of the falling sickness now, there's no doubting he's dead-set against ye going now."

"Father? Where...where is father," Astra said weakly.

"He's coming to see ye now, child, though your illness has shocked his tresses with grey hair, ye worried him so."

As if on command, an austere older gentleman, dressed in ceremonial armor and bearing the silver circlet that marked the sovereign ruler of Aquilaria passed through her door. Tears trickled down from his eyes and marred his grand, fine-groomed beard.

His beard.

The warrior woman's wits came back to her in a rush.

"My father doesn't wear a beard. Show yourself, imp."

The false king's form shimmered, and in its place was an immense, hairy man clad in hunting clothes, vines twined in his mane, and his head adorned by a crown of stag antlers.

"Nay, princess, ye've got the wrong faerie. 'Tis not the sprite that ministers to you, but I, the Huntsman, the Spinner of Dreams."

"It matters not who you are," Astra said spitefully, "I've beaten you. Your game is up. You can't fool me anymore."

"But are they so bad, these finely-wrought lies?" he murmured idly, picking a withered flower from his tatterdemalion mantle, "Not real, 'tis true, but real enough. Perhaps better than outside. Your friends had no trouble accepting the new lives we crafted for them. Lady Andrea Croix has her comforts back in Croix Keep, all thoughts of betrayal and night horrors long forgotten. Simon we have given a woodland shrine and young acolytes to learn from his wisdom. Lord Frederigo D'Honaire has slain the dragon and won the accolades of the King's court, finally able to do what his father failed at..."

Astra reeled at this, especially the revelations about Frederigo's relationship with his father, but grew skeptical again.

"What of Aethir, fell one?"

"Oh, that waste? He was used up. We meant for you to find him. He was only good for bait, as we'd already used him in the tithe to Hell..."

"All the same, Huntsman, I choose to refuse your offer."

No sooner had the words escaped her lips than blackness came to engulf her...


Two figures skulk in a nightmarish glen, a third, cowled figure brooding upon a throne built of brambles. One is a tiny man, clad only in vines, with eyes twin pits of darkness. The other seems more tree than man, a green, mossy giant whose height matches that of the forest around him. He bellows at the spriggan.

"What do you mean you couldn't break her? We spent the last two decades or so trying to break the axe-bearer, and still didn't succeed before they freed him! Now he's gone missing, and you tell me you can't break the warrior woman, either?"

The spriggan snarls with indignation at this, and suddenly he is as tall as the green man, his form startlingly swelled into a stag-crowned huntsman.

"I won't take this disrespect from you! It's your damned fault we can't even place that one in the dreaming, I'm sure," the now-giant figure shouts, gesturing wildly towards the trees where a strange bundle swings in the chill wind.

"Enough," the figure upon the throne says, and they are silent.

"We have little enough time as it is. I'll not have you two waste it quarreling."

"Understood, Queen Mab," the green man says, a look of shame crossing his lichen-encrusted face.

"The tithe to Hell is--"

"The tithe to Hell is already late, Mab," a voice says from an unexpected source, the bundle itself.

"So our prisoner grows a tongue," the huntsman says, drawing a knife, "what know you of the tithe to Hell, mortal"

"Only what those whom I speak for tell me," the voice in the bundle says, its voice hollow and distant. The shape of a hand can be seen pressed against the sackcloth which binds the prisoner, and a sizzling, glowing red symbol begins to burn its way through the bundle, "but let us speak of pleasanter things, such as deals, sirrah. Offer me the proper terms and I assure you, the debts of the Unseelie Court which are owed to my masters can be...overlooked."



Andrea and Frederigo tumbled to the ground in a roughly-dug dirt tunnel, lit only by luminous mosses. Andrea shook off her confusion to survey the scene around her. It was so strange, so many dreams, so many muddled, misty scenes, but her senses were clear now.

"Andrea, are you alright?"

"I...I think so. Where are the others?"

"Gone, Andrea. We barely made it free ourselves. I had to drag you to the dvergar tunnels."

Tears welled up in her eyes, but she choked them back down. She had to be strong now. It's what Astra would have wanted...


Astra, princess of Aquilaria, awoke to rough, callused hands shaking her sternly from her sleep. Her eyes snapped open to see a rough-featured bearish man with a warrior's build and intricate blue tatoos, marks of bravery. He was frantically ripping vines from her arms and legs, apparently trying to free her.

The warrior woman felt strangely drained, as if she had been asleep for days, possibly weeks.

This time, however, she knew the haggard face and bleary eyes which greeted her.

It was Aethir MacFionn...

  1. Astra stepped pensively forward...
  2. Astra frantically reached for her sword, but the familiar hilt did not meet her grasp...

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4/13/2000 7:35:56 PM

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