How to Be a God [ManXMan]

Chapter Twenty-Four: Faerie - Part 2

~Chapter Twenty-Four: Faerie~

My legs twitch in pain when I finally take a seat at the dinner table later than night. Running through the castle while playing an unending game of hide-and-seek with the Bauchan turned out to be more exhausting than I had expected when I agreed to play. I spent more time seeking than I did hiding, as Ratha quickly caught on to my fear of ghosts and knew where to look since I often avoided places with high phantom activity.

Gwyn has kept the ghost servants out of places I frequent often, but they still have to work throughout the castle and that made it hard to find a good, ghost-free hiding spot I had yet to already use by the twentieth round. Though, I was able to hide for a long while when she first found out about my fear, as she was too busy laughing on the floor to realize I had slipped away to start my turn. That round lasted almost thirty minutes and helped repair my pride a little.

Between our turns, I learned quite a bit about the Bauchan. Such as, Ratha assists my uncle to repay a life debt, and she, along with multiple other Fae loyal to Gwyn, had been stationed in areas around Faerie in case I returned before Gwyn managed to hunt me down. I am actually quite lucky she was the one to find me, as she was probably the most docile Fae he employed for the job. Apparently, my uncle had also sent out some Redcaps and the mere thought of running into one of them has my blood running cold.

God or not, Redcaps are terrifying little murderous beasts. Gwyn would never let them kill me, but that would not stop them from soaking their hats in my blood, which was very limited at the time.

The sudden sound of a chair being pulled across the floor has my eyes flying open, though I was not even aware I had closed them. Perhaps I am more worn out from the games than I thought. Gwyn takes his seat at the table, sitting a few chair-lengths away at the head of the table while I sit to his left. I still find it odd that he has such a large table with only four chairs.

As soon as he is seated, the smell of food becomes stronger, signaling the approach of the brownies, but Gwyn does not wait for them. Instead, he just starts the table talk with, "I hate the demons, as you well know, but the witches are the antagonists in this war."

He pauses to take a deep breath before continuing, "Many years ago, and even longer in the human realm, the witches created magical prisons that draw magic from the captives. The Seelie and Unseelie King at the time joined their magic to shut the prisons all down. Somehow, the witches have a few of the prisons running once more and are gaining power in doing so. Naturally, this irritated the current Seelie and Unseelie Kings, but what infuriated them most was the imprisonment of some halfling Fae and weaker Fae."

I fight off the urge to scoff. Normally, the Fae Kings would sooner cut off their own arm than care about halflings or weaker Fae who have no real role to play in the Courts. However, the moment some other race threatens the two mostly-powerless groups, they are up in arms and vehemently arguing on behalf of the Fae and halflings they usually deem as not worth their time. "The witches should not have the strength to overpower the magic of two Kings," I point out, feeling like I am missing something.

Unfortunately, it seems that my uncle is missing something as well, as he merely shrugs. "No one I talked to could tell me how it was done, just that it was," he says. "There was an attack on the Mer by the witches, for unknown reasons, and it seems as though an entire branch was wiped from existence recently."

They attacked the peace-lovers?

"In the Great Fae War, the demons caused more damage to the Fae lands than the mortal realm, making the argument that the demons need to pay for damaging the mortal realm weak in comparison to the claim the Fae have, a claim we never took outside the use of curses," he continues. "And if they truly wanted revenge, they should remember the Were creatures fought as well, yet they try to recruit them."