Mag Mel

So I jumped off the cliff.

Seemed like a good idea at the time. At least, it seemed like a perfectly unreasonable, but very satisfying, idea at the time--and that was good enough for me. I could hear Laurel yelling at me as I started falling, but after a moment that stopped. I wasn't in Ireland anymore. I had fallen into some field with lush greenery and five menacing, spear-wielding horsemen. Before I could really explain anything a woman showed up on a unicorn too. Yeah. That's right. A unicorn. And unicorn-lady, Cordelia, demanded to know what I was doing here. So I told her.

"I'm Gunnar, son of Heimdall, and I have come here to warn Manannan Mac'Lir that there will be another assault by the Fomorians within the week."

Then I mentioned something about Balor's Eye and everyone freaked out. Well, they backed up a fair bit. I was wondering what was taking the others so long right about the time that they finally fell out of mid-air next to me. Apparently an old acquaintance had shown up to tell Nate that he had told her to tell him to "Protect the Last Strand." Nate didn't remember this. We presume he will learn to time-travel eventually. That or the poor girl's insane. Either way, it's what had taken them so long.

So Cordelia decided to take the strange group of scions to her father, Manannan Mac'Lir, to deal with all these claims we were making. The whole of Mag Mel was gorgeous too. Beautiful plants, beautiful city, beautiful castle-thing. Well, okay, there was the southern 4/5ths of the place which we later discovered looked a bit like an over-grown cesspool, but the bit we were seeing then was nice and pretty. When we got to the castle though, Cordelia told us only one of us could talk to her dad. So we sent Nate. He's kind of a diplomat in that he's more talkative than Brendan and Camilla, more stately than Jack and Laurel, and a fair bit less of a confrontational bastard than I am sometimes.

Okay, most of the time.

Nate comes back out a few minutes later without the dreaded eye. Apparently Mac'Lir wasn't too happy to find out that it was out in the open and activated. In any case, most of us figured he was a better protector of it than we were. Apparently his recent battles had injured his eyes a bit, but I'm sure he would still be pretty effective at guarding it. Besides which, we were left to help the citizens of Mag Mel prepare for the coming battle ourselves. So we met with their leaders.

After a lot of discussion we decided to fight on two fronts. It was a mistake for Napoleon, it was a mistake for the Prussians, and it was a mistake for Hitler. But it was fucking brilliant for us.

The first front was a bridge between the part of the island that the Fomorians had taken over, and the "Last Strand" which is apparently the only thing keeping Mag Mel from floating off into darkness, forever lost to the void. Cheerful, huh?
The second front was a mountainous pass between the enemy and the city.
Then we came up with a pair of great plans. First of all, we started making preparations to light the bridge on fire during the battle. It would force the Fomorians to march through the fire, and with some careful tactics, to fight in it for some time. I wasn't on that battlefield during the battle, but I hear it helped a fair bit. Still, the plan for the pass did a lot more damage to our enemies. Laurel and I actually spent days setting it up, and then just before the battle Jack, Nevermore--Laurel's British raven (don't ask)--and I had to set the thing off and high-tail it back to our positions.

It was a landslide. Two actually. One on each side of the pass. I took out at least half of the enemy forces going into the pass. I mean, it's a terrible thing to see people's houses broken apart or torn away by avalanches, but seeing a thousand or so hulking, murderous, boil-skinned monsters torn asunder is wonderful.

The battle went the way battles go. Armies advance, archers fire, armies clash, archers fire, armies are routed, archers fire, armies rally, archers fire, and somewhere amidst all of this a small group of cavalry, led by a woman on a unicorn, is completely ineffectual. I can't actually say much better for myself. I may have killed four or five Fomorians in the course of the battle. The bows they provided were not very powerful, and this magical realm made guns inoperable. Luckily, Jack took care of the actual winning part. I'm fairly sure that I saw him personally kill over two dozen Fomorians in a single minute at one point. He is a sight to behold sometimes.

I hear that the bridge fight was hardly so glamorous. They suffered some pretty heavy casualties, and weren't making much head-way. That is, apparently, until Manannan Mac'Lir turned into a giant octopus of water and simply hurled the bridge-full of Fomorians off into the void. Fuckers got what they deserved.

However, just before he did this the Fomorians had hurled out their insurance plan, it seems. An enormous carcass full of mind-controlling maggots. Laurel tells me that she barely shook off the spell they put her under, and she had to do everything in her power to help the others out.
I showed up--jumping over as fast as I could--just about the time that they were getting their heads back on straight. Also, just in time to see the weary and fatigued Manannan Mac'Lir pull himself up onto land only to be pierced through the chest by an arrow of Camilla's.

That's right. She just up and killed him. Right there in front of everyone. I'm not saying that I would have approved if she did it in secret, but I would have expected that she would do that sort of thing quietly, not in plain view of all of her supposed allies.

And I do mean supposed. I'm not sure I can trust someone who knocks people off just because someone told them to. Yeah, she was hired, basically. By her dad. Hades. But that bit comes later. At first it was just a matter of knocking unconscious all the poor mind-controlled soldiers.

Now, Nate had been consulting with Hachiman regarding trying to restore Mag Mel after the battle, and Hachiman and Mac'Lir had some meetings. But we really weren't sure what was going to be going on now. And we were especially confused since, just before the battle began, we spotted the Morrigan standing inside the city too. All I have to say about the Morrigan is that I don't trust people who are notoriously insane. So when we were getting back in the city, and saw Hachiman shaking hands with the Morrigan, I was not happy. Turns out they split the place in half.

Wonderful. I mean, I didn't like it, but what claim could I make to them doing otherwise? I'm just some kid. Hell, Hachiman told Hades, when he showed up to defend his daughter, that they would discuss further when they weren't in front of "the children." I understand that I'm no deity who has seen the passage of ages from Ulysses of Ithaca to Ulysses S. Grant, but I know an opportunist when I see one. I'm pretty well convinced that the Morrigan, and much more especially Hades, aren't in on this because they've got a soft spot in their hearts for helping the oppressed.

Anyway, there wasn't much we could do about it. Besides, we had a bit more on our minds. A couple of guys in the group had wards on Laurel's house in Berkeley that had started sounding alarms in their heads, and just before I'd come back in here for the last time Jack's half-brother Victor, a son of Ares, called me to tell me that he'd kidnapped my mother in order to get his armor back from Jack. Because that's the smart kind of guy Victor is. Jack had previously let Victor live after a confrontation in which Victor tried to kill all of us, including Jack. However, rather than just trying to appeal to his half-brother in some more intelligent way, Victor kidnapped MY mother as leverage.

I was going to put an end to him with a fifty-caliber slug in Victor's head if he hurt my mother. I was going to break his arm as a simple lesson if he hadn't. When I found him he was dead, and had no arms.

Sometimes life's a bitch.