[Teaser] Uninvited

[Cailleach]

Cailleach's eyelids slid open, leaving a translucent membrane covering her actual eyes to protect them from the murky water. Warm mud envelops most of her and it takes some wriggling to free herself from where she sunk into the ground while she'd dreamt. Her legs kick out and merge together into a slick tail, the fins propelling her upwards until she breaches the water's surface. Fingers find purchase in the soft peat and she hefts herself out of the bog. Even if she cared about her modesty, there's little that isn't concealed by the brackish mud still covering her head to toe. She'd been happy to swim in the Abyss, watching, learning, basking in the infinite glow of the Sparks, but much as she was loathe to admit, the Morrigan and her friends are right and in their blind prodding they'd unearthed secrets of their own. Broken rules she'd thought sacrosanct.

"He bloody named it." she rasps to herself.

And now her counterpart was about to outdo her. Set foot in what she could only dream of with a plan to sing to the Sparks. Her motivations are just. As silly and obnoxious as the Phantom Queen is about some things, they're in agreement that the Titans must be quelled. She breaks into a sprint, feet leaving deep imprints in the ground for a couple of steps before she's carried aloft by unfurling wings and a large vulture soars into the skies, letting the air currents carry her south. She was not about to let them venture forth alone and if she has to stalk them into the Abyss then so be it...

[Cailleach]

Soaring above the clouds Cailleach finds her thoughts mulling over unfamiliar things. She's spend plenty of time on her own - most of it, in fact - but fully enveloped in the moment; in the truth of her being. Monsters don't ponder and at most she'd traced the infinite mysteries of the Sparks or the texture of terror in the hearts of her prey. There were none who didn't deserve to find their end by her tooth and claw. But that was before. Things had changed and she's not sure how. She'd hunted a new, thrilling trail left in the wake of the floating fortress of ice and steel and been bested. So unfamiliar. So temporary. Even the deepest frost didn't hold her and she'd made a bargain with the Electric Song and her shark to chase her quarry.

And then?

She'd hunted since then, even while sharing her flesh with the Morrigan, trying to convince her of her truth. Only now does she realize somehow she herself had strayed. The flesh here didn't taste as sweet. As righteous as it once had. Had she weakened? No... she'd only grown stronger, supped deeper from the truth of the Abyss. It must be this world that's less... deserving of her claws. Why else would she have spared so many and toyed with them instead. But what about the Screaming Void that called itself Hazard? He'd been useful in her escape but there was no doubt in her mind he was poison. She should have ripped him to pieces the moment they'd slipped the cage of human-wrought steel. Shouldn't have let the little one sing a song so vile it screamed across the Abyss like a rusty nail. She'd been distracted by plunging into the Depths. By the sump in her soul she now shared with the Morrigan.

She'd grown derelict in her self. She'd toyed with Samantha and offered her a pact. To scare her; but the Phantom Queen had turned out to be more cunning than that. She'd seen right through her and that, in turn, frightened Cailleach. And now they had learned their own secrets of the Sparks. The soft one calling itself Will had found a way to speak to his own Spark, something even she wasn't capable of. The Morrigan somehow had insight into the cancerous Titans and reached across the endless divide to make Sparks bloom in their keepers rather than wilt. Even the living machine had supposedly found a way to somehow throw wide the gates to the Abyss itself.

Who was she if not the devouring monster? What would they find if they shone a light into the dark corners where she lurked? She'd never had to ask herself these things but now those questions wouldn't leave her be.

It would all make sense if she could plunge herself into the Abyss. It was truth incarnate, it would wash away the doubts and questions and surely return to her the clarity and purpose of her Monstrous Self...