Fell Champions

“Fuck,” Otter said, shivering from the sudden cold.

She was Canadian. She was used to cold winters and heavy snows. Honestly, if it was snowing, that usually meant it was warm, by Canadian standards. Snow usually meant moisture in the air, which happened more often at certain temperatures. Temperatures that were warmer than a true Canadian winter.

But Otter was also from the South Pacific. Sure, she’d been raised in Canada, but her lineage hailed from warmer climates, and part of her blood yearned for that kind of weather in a way she couldn’t explain. She’d taken to the LA scene pretty well during that period of her life.

She called up her Thread of Sanctuary ability, and tried to weave an outfit of winter clothes.

Nothing happened.

She swore. Yeah, that tracked. The Dreamer was probably blocking her ability to access her own Pact abilities. Or maybe it had to do with the nature of this space, how in the presence of a Dreamer, time didn’t really seem to matter, like it was an afterthought. Maybe in this place, she didn’t have access to her Pact because it hadn’t happened yet.

Beside her, Kir stood naked, and didn’t seem bothered by the cold at all, which honestly kind of offended Otter’s sense of Canadian pride. She was supposed to be the one who was a badass around cold, and now Kir was completely showing her up.

With some effort, Otter lowered her arms so she was no longer hugging herself, and looked around. No matter what direction she looked in, that one mountain peak was always at the center of her vision. It didn’t move, so much as it was just… always there, which was trippy as hell. She hadn’t felt her brain spin this hard since the first time she’d tried shrooms.

“So, does, uh, the mountain talk?” Otter asked.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Kir said.

“No shit.”

“The Dreamer might kill you. You don’t have the wards, the protection.”

“And I have nothing but nice things to say about them, too. Why would it try to kill me?”

“The same reason a predator chases prey that runs, even when it’s not hungry. It’s just its nature. You came here unprotected. It will try to test you. And that might mean killing you.”

“Seems rude.”

“Do you ever take anything seriously?”

“Oral hygiene. Look on the bright side.”

“Which is?”

“If your Dreamer kills me, you’re free. You don’t need to worry about me controlling you.”

“Yes, because I’ve secretly been planning your demise this whole time, just to be rid of you.” Kir rolled her eyes so hard that Otter could practically hear it. “If I let anything happen to you, Rua would kill me, I think.”

“Are you kidding me? She likes you more than she likes me.”

“It’s not a competition. I mean, I am winning, but Rua’s Silayan. She isn’t emotionally equipped to pick favourites like that.”

“Mind you, you’re only winning because you’ve known her longer. Also, you have nicer tits.”

“Ah, but you apparently have the nicer ass.”

“This seems like a weird thing to talk about. Do you think the Dreamer is just… sitting there, all mountain-like, listening to us prattle?”

“You’re prattling. I am bantering. And no. The Herald likely isn’t even aware we’re here. It would’ve–”

“WHO ENTERS MY DOMAIN.”

The sound of the voice hit Otter like a thunderclap directly into her ears and set them ringing.

She stuck a finger in one of her ears, and began making a “mawp” sound over and over. “Is it always like this?”

Kir ignored her, stepping forward. “I am Kirhaela Maravok. Battalion Lord. Seat of Maravok. Burden of Dreams. Daughter of Old Grey. And I come to you as a supplicant.”

There was a long pause. The wind continued to howl, the snow continued to fall. Otter tried really hard to make it look like she wasn’t cold at all, even if she was pretty sure she could etch her name in ice with her nipples.

“IMPOSSIBLE.”

“I know what I’ve come to ask–” Kir began, but the Dreamer interrupted her.

“YOU BEING HERE IS IMPOSSIBLE. IT HAS NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE. IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN. AND YET, HERE YOU ARE.”

“Uh, yeah, that’s probably my bad,” Otter said, stepping forward. “This was my idea.”

“IRRELEVANT. TIME HAS BEEN ALTERED. THE UNSWIMMABLE WATERS HAVE BEEN NAVIGATED.”

Otter felt sweat running down her neck, and wiped it away. She looked at her fingers, and saw crimson. Ah. Blood then. Probably from her ears, with all the shouting this Dreamer was doing right into her ear canal.

“Wouldn’t be the first Dreamer I–”

There was a burst of sound, a high-pitched whine directly in her skull, boring into the deepest parts of her brain. She fell to her knees, clutching her ears, but it wasn’t actually a physical sensation.

“YOU ARE ONE OF HOLT’S SHADOWS. YOU ARE ANCHORED TO MY ADHERENT THROUGH HER PACT. I DID NOT FORESEE THIS. I HAVE NOT SEEN THIS. HOW?”

Otter tried to answer, but that sound, that awful sound, was drilling into her more and more, not letting up. She could feel the blood flowing out of her ears now. And her nose. And her eyes.

Oh. That wasn’t good.

“HOW?”

“Stop it!” Kir shouted. “Release her, or I’ll…”

Kir trailed off. She didn’t have the fight in her to take on a Dreamer, Otter suspected. Not like it mattered. There wasn’t a ton they could do to it.

Otter needed to think of a plan. That was her thing. Insane plans. But she couldn’t bring her mind together. Couldn’t think, not with that dreadful, awful sound.

She was going to die here, she realized. She’d finally made a plan so stupid that even her madness and luck couldn’t save her, and no one had stopped her despite everyone knowing it was a bad idea.

No Sami to stop her. No Everett to have her back. No Il-Su to strike her enemy down while she had them distracted.

But she had Kir.

And Kir was still speaking. Something pitched low, her voice a mutter. Too quiet for Otter to hear in the best of times, much less when she had something skull fucking her with sound.

“I WILL HAVE ANSWERS.”

Kir’s voice picked up, confidence now filling her, but Otter couldn’t hear what she was saying. She forced herself to look up, to meet Kir’s eyes. To try to get an idea of what the plan was. Assuming, of course, there was a plan.

There was a steadfast determination in Kir’s eyes. A hard strength, one focused on taking on an impossible task. Her lips moved, her voice loud, but Otter was still unable to hear the words. But whatever she was saying, it’d gotten the Dreamer’s attention.

“STOP. THIS IS MY DOMAIN. YOU CANNOT–”

But Kir continued, now shouting, shouting loud enough that even Otter could hear her, “I invoke the Queen of the Tides! The Breaker of Ships! The Lord of War! I call upon the Sleeper in the Depths!”

The snow stopped.

The storm itself did not cease, it just… froze. Individual snowflakes hung in the air, suspended in defiance of gravity. Otter would’ve marveled at it, but was busy blissing out on the fact that the fucking sound in her skull had stopped, and she was enjoying blessed silence.

Now she knew how everyone felt when she stopped talking.

The endless expanse of snow around them began to turn black. Not all of it. Just perfectly round spots, all of different sizes, all spaced out at random intervals. Thousands of them. Shadow began to bleed from them, bubbling up, a dark miasma churning through the snow in each of these spots. Mist the colour of midnight flowed upwards, and paid no heed to the wind still attempting to howl and drive it away.

The mist solidified into inky black tentacles.

They waved about lazily, seemingly unconcerned.

“YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED HERE. THIS IS MY DOMAIN.”

In the darkness, off in the horizon, a pair of yellow eyes large enough to rival the mountain, opened. They superimposed themselves on Otter’s vision, just like the mountain. Everywhere she looked, she could see that darkness and those eyes peering from it, just as everywhere she looked, she could only see that white mountain.

Otter’s brain shuddered at the contradiction. She could feel a little bit of blood begin to trickle down her nose again, and had to fight the urge to vomit. To her side, Kir staggered, but steadied herself, and helped Otter to her feet.

“Did you just do what I think you did?” she asked.

“I had no choice,” Kir said. “The Herald was killing you.”

“You know, when you go and do an insane plan like that, you almost make me forget that I’m still really mad at you for what you did to Rua.”

Those yellow eyes crinkled at the corners in amusement, and then they slowly closed. And then standing in front of them in all her glory, a Silayan appearing woman nearly seven feet tall, dressed in a black slinky gown, and with burning golden eyes, was the Sleeper in the Depths, the Silayan Dreamer.

“Well. You do always manage to bring the entertainment, don’t you?” she asked, a small smile on her face.