Avion flew to the dresser, his silver eyes wild, his face contorted. White hands that shook with anger (or fear, or rage, I couldn’t tell which) threw open the drawers, scattering the objects across the spare-room floor. His hair had come undone, but I don’t think he noticed. Instead, he fumbled through the items, collapsed on the ground, completely humbled and frantic, his searching fingers grazing through razors, pearls, and a now-scratched looking glass. Oswald was shouting something incoherent, and Tzer was standing there as if unsure of what to do.

“You knew!” I snapped accusingly at the Seelie man, who ignored me and rose, rifling now frenetically through his sleeves. “You knew, this whole time, what was going to happen!” Avion shouldered past me, and I could see his teeth clenched down, his jaw taut as if wired shut. I grasped his arm and tried to haul him around to face me. “You kn--”

“SHUT UP!” Avion roared, and taken by surprise, I didn’t have time to defend myself as the silver-haired man grasped my forearm and slammed me against the door. Platinum eyes burned and blazed, and an almost predatory look crossed that noble, long-jawed face of oh, so many angles. “Shut up, Blood. I am not incapable of hearing. Yes, I knew. But there is no time for that now,” he added, still glowering , and shoved me back against the doorframe. Stunned, but still furious, I made no move to stop him as he swept past me. “My sister was taken from me, Cameron,” he added, back to me, his strides long and purposeful as he made his way around the corner to the kitchen. Oswald moved to speak and was shot down with a withering stare. “It would be in your best interests to recall that not only you are at a loss here!” He slammed open the door to the kitchen so ferociously that a picture on the wall, wobbling in its golden frame, fell and shattered, scattering glass across the floor in a sea of gleaming shards.

“Simon!” he bellowed, his face still maddened, and the still-bound captive on the chair. “You still possess it, do you not? The daggers, man!” he shook the blonde-haired fellow’s shoulders. “The daggers, now!”

“Avion, back off!” Tzer barked, finally snapping back to his senses and reaching out to grasp the Seelie’s arms and haul him off. Simon, shaken, sat back soundlessly, his face pale and his expression timid. Avion, snarling faintly, swung a hand out and slapped Simon as hard as he could from where he was. The blonde man’s head snapped to one side, and with a snarling complaint, the Brit swung a leg upwards in order to kick Avion’s shin. Oswald hastily intervened, shoving Simon’s chair backwards, and thrusting his arms out to either side, a terrified expression on his face as he stood, cowering, before the angered, silver-haired man.

“Cool it,” Tzer added gratingly. “Arguing isn’t going to get us anywhere. Now, you say you wanted daggers? You have your own, Avion, what use have you for Simon’s?”

Avion stared at the floor, and I felt a slight wave of repulsion rush through me, watching his stricken face go from rage to chagrined self-doubt, and he twisted his lips upwards into a sneer, before he turned away, facing the wall, and struggled with something to say. He looked washed out in the dim yellow room of the kitchen, tinier than before, with an aged expression in silver eyes that reflected no more light than allowed.

“A long time ago,” he began to say quietly, “When I was still an instructor, I gave unto my disciple a gift. A weapon that can become any weapon, in turn, and reveal itself to be of use to the wielder. It can take on any shape or physical form, for from the Earth it was made, and only the holder of the sword, who is pure of mind and free of self-discretions, can truly wield its powers.”

“That’s pretty,” Tzer said snidely. “But what does it mean?”

Avion shut his eyes, and, lifting a hand to his forehead, quietly shrugged, and, reaching for Simon, rummaged around in the man’s coat for a moment, tugging out a few small throwing knives, carefully holding them by their plastic or wooden hilts in turn (I recalled, briefly, that fairies can’t touch steel or iron), and finally, without any move of protest from the man on the chair, drew out a pair of simple, gleaming black-and-gray daggers, no longer than Simon’s scrawny forearm.

They didn’t stay that way for long, though. In a twinkling of an instant, before five sets of--four sets of seeing eyes, the daggers shifted shapes with a flicker of blue-white light, growing and curving in place as if they’d been struck by warmth and snapped by a blacksmith’s hammer. They shifted wickedly, into points and shears that bent in the shape of a semi-circle or a crescent moon, gleaming and purest silver.

As the light faded from the magnificent weapons, Avion calmly flipped the daggers over and over again in his elegant, ringed fingers, despite the gaping stares he was receiving in every direction except Simon’s, of course, who only offered a dry, “What, you didn’t know they could do that?”, before settling back in his seat and looking mildly frustrated.

“What--IS--are those?” I asked finally, pointing shakily at the weapons. There was both a draw to them and a push--something that enticed, and another; weaker sensation--a warning, of sorts, to stay far, far away from those beautiful, wickedly curved blades. On the faces of my companions, I saw similar struggles. Oswald’s eyes were round as saucers, and I saw Tzer flex and unflex his digits. Simon’s face was strained, his jaw clenched, and I could tell he was chewing on the inside of his cheek.

“These,” said Avion calmly, holding out the blades towards me in turn. “Or, this, more appropriately, is a blade long sang and spoke of in both lyric and legend, or poem. It is a sword from the shores of Avalon itself, forged on emerald hills by the Lady of the Lake herself, whose blessing--”

“Oh, bloody fucking hell,” Simon shouted sharply, startling the lot of us. “Did you forget about your sister or NOT, mate?! Get ON with it!”

Avion closed his eyes briefly, and, sighing, nodded, surprisingly, in agreement--cutting his little speech short. The room was silent for a moment, as the Seelie man once more offered me the evil-looking daggers.

“Here,” he said simply. “Take of the blade. You shall bear witness firsthand to the powers it can perform.”

I hesitated a moment longer, and felt the tainted magics in my brain seethe and writhe, as if they feared the near-wintry glint of the blades. But what harm could come of them? Pure of mind… Pure of mind. What did that even mean, anyway? Reaching out, I paused, then curled my fingers around the hilts of the daggers, and, abruptly, was swung towards the ceiling as my hands were yanked upwards of their own accord.

With a burst of cerulean light that looked like a swirl of water, the daggers shifted in my hands, which were forced together, and violently shaking. The hilt began to blur, and with a surge of icy heat, the hilts of the daggers melted into one, and the blade twisted and twined into a swirling form over the hilt, then rose upwards, sharp and bright, a gleaming statement that looked more like some mythical horn than any weapon I had ever seen.

  I lowered the rapier in awe, staring at it and turning the faintly-blue weapon over and over again in my hands. A little tassel, gently flopping out of the bottom of the hilt, proved to have a little pendant on one end, revealing a blue stone, like a sapphire, set in silver and azure.

“It knows your mind. Try it,” Avion said calmly. I stepped forwards, and, spinning the rapier in my hands, swung it around. It made a singing sound, proof of valuable steel, as it rigidly, yet fluidly moved through the cold air of the golden room. It stopped at the base of Tzer’s throat, and as Avion gestured for me to offer it to him, I felt reluctant to let go--and the demon seemed even more reluctant to touch it.

“It’s incredible,” I offered, forgetting my anger for the sake of awe, and yet the demon still paused, staring at the sword with a wariness unlike any I had ever seen. I suppose Kale reflected his caution.

Gently, however, his fingers finally withdrew the rapier from my hands, and, with a sharp flash of fiery red-orange light that spiraled up the base of the sword, I watched in awe as the small blade expanded, growing, broadening, and swiveling upwards with swiftness, rather than the gradualness my sword’s transformation had had. It curved with a roar of steel and a ‘shing’ of metal--and the butt of an enormous scythe slammed into the floor, between Tzer’s feet.

Catlike, flame-colored eyes were wide, and his mouth was half-agape with a breathless, giddy delight I would have said was comical to see, especially on Kale’s features, but, as he moved to swing the blade, Avion hastily made to grab it back.

“There is not time anymore. The point is, my dears…” he held the sword up with a triumphant look on his angular face. “This is E--”

“Wait, wait!” Oswald piped up, tugging on Avion’s sleeve. Everyone, in turn, glanced down at him. The boy’s large eyes were pleading, his lower lip protruding ever so slightly, as if he couldn’t believe that he--oh, he hadn’t gotten a turn. “Why can’t I give it a try, sir? Please? Pretty please? Pretty please with a cherry on top? O-or something yummy delicious?”

Avion, wrinkling up his straight, pointed nose, yanked his silver robes out of Oswald’s gripping fingers and scowled slightly, his serious expression returning abruptly.

“No, you silly boy,” he said softly, an eyebrow raising in cold disregard to Oswald’s pained expression. “Surely a child such as yourself would break a priceless object as this.”

“Isn’t that thing indestructible?” Sneered Tzer, scratching the side of his nose as Simon struggled abruptly against his bonds, cursing faintly at the ropes that held him so firmly in place. Avion turned to glance at the demon, then the Brit, and, crouching down close to the latter, he spoke mellifluously to Simon’s ear.

“Simon,” he said quietly. “Simon, can you hear me? Are you listening, Simon?” The blind man stared at nothing, his hands behind his back and his shaggy, dirty-blonde hair hanging partially in front of his face. The rumpled bangs stirred against the icy breath Avion always seemed to have, but other than that, the slim figure was unreadable and unmoving, his features as composed as stone.

I couldn’t blame him, not wanting to talk to a man so full of secrets and magic and lies. But I saw Avion’s face twist again as if in pain, and he turned to lightly touch Simon’s shoulder, but the stony, sullen figure jerked out of his grasp, his own features furious.

“I never meant for this to happen,” he began to say quietly, using one of his daggers to cut the bonds on Simon’s wrists, hacking away very carefully around the man’s pale fingers. “I only wanted to see how far I could push, what plans Mab had in store for us. I wanted to see what trust and keeping her word meant to her.” Simon’s wrists and hands were now freed, and Avion began to work on the binding on his ankles, humbling himself yet again by bending towards the man’s feet. “I--”

“So this all WAS a clever little ploy of yours, was it?” I said, despite the sincerity of the moment. Avion closed his eyes briefly, then glanced up at me, his face unreadable. I spread my hands, hatred fueling the mocking movement as I shrugged my broad shoulders with scorn. “A clever ploy, but not clever enough. So--let me see if I have this straight…” I began to pace, back and forth, across the room, raising a finger with each point I proceeded to make. “You knew about the spells she’d cast before’and, ye knew about the…the corruption of my power, and ye knew that Simon might be blinded?”

“I never said that,” Avion said, white faced, standing abruptly. “What I only said was--”

And it was then that Simon’s fist shot out and clocked Avion across the jaw so hard that the delicate Seelie man stumbled, clutching his face. Oswald, silent for so long, let out a timid, terrified squeak, and Tzer, agape, rushed towards Avion, who waved him off, straightening. Simon, breathing heavily, clenched his fists.

“I suppose I deserved that,” Avion murmured. Simon punched him again, then proceeded to flail and try to hit him as many times as he could, but without his sight, it was difficult--still, Tzer and I (though I only reluctantly) seized one each of Simon’s arms to hold him back. “And those as well,” Avion added darkly, spitting out a thin trickle of blood from between his lips.

“Go to Hell!” Simon spat, and wrestled against Tzer and I. “Let the fuck go! NOW!” he bellowed. Oswald closed his eyes, and promptly buried his face in his hands. I was seeing red, with half a notion to strangle or strike the lithe Seelie man myself, but I restrained such urges with difficulty. “GO TO THE NEXUS!” Roared Simon. “Find her on yer bloody own, I am so fucking through with you! Fix me! Or fix yourself, ye old stupid--”

Avion held up a hand.

“Silence,” he said, and so much command resonated in the word that the very walls seemed to rattle, although he did not raise his voice above a whisper. The room grew quiet, and slightly dark. His silver eyes narrowed slightly. “You wish to defeat Mab as much as I, do you not?” We all nodded, or made noises of unwilling agreement in turn. “Then you must learn to THINK like her,” he said, sounding somewhat despairing. “It can be painful. Evil. Tainting. Harsh,” he said quietly. “But there is no time to try and explain it.” He turned towards Tzer. “I will need Kale, now, please,” he said with an elegant bow. The demon’s eyebrows rose, and he stepped back.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. What? There’s no way. I can’t shift now, my powers are all out of whack, and I--” Avion’s hand shot forward, and, ramming the palm of his hand over Tzer’s face with a snarl, he held the demon in place, though I saw Tzer begin to writhe and curse.

“What’re ye doin’ ter him?!” I howled, stalking forwards, but Avion threw a look of pointed reckoning my way, sharp and terribly cruel. There came, suddenly, a scratching at the door, and a slithering noise outside--accompanied by ghoulish laughter that sounded not unlike a hyena. It felt as if the entire room had slowly begun to freeze. I could see my breath, and it was getting rather hard to move. Oswald’s teeth began to chatter, and I felt a stab of iciness spread over my chest. Glancing down, I realized my shirt was freezing.

“…what the hell is going on?” I whispered, rubbing my arms furiously.

“Gorlocks,” said Simon grimly, slumping down against the floor and hugging one leg to his chest. “Freezing demons. The-the--they stop travel through time and space…Mab’s control. Things like that, mostly. They like to eat brains and hearts…No doubt they came here to stop YOU, O great and noble master of mine.”

“Former master,” Avion said wearily. “And I do not regret what I taught you, despite all. Yes,” he continued. “Gorlocks. W-we have to hurry before they break the defenses.” The door thudded and rattled, and there was a howl and scratching renewed, accompanied by more hyena-like laughter. “We need to cross over to the other side.”

Tzer had begun to breathe smoke, his breath coming in sharp, slate-gray puffs into the air. The frostiness around him simmered as if in great heat, melting--a puddle formed at his feet, and Avion, hissing in pain, drew his hand away from the other man’s forehead. Tzer’s slit-pupil eyes were wide, and, clenching his fists, he reached up, gripping his face, and issued forth a scream so inhuman it raised the hairs on the back of my neck and arms.

It sounded like the dying cry of a bird of prey, shot down--murdered. I don’t know. It almost hurt.

“I am so, so sorry,” Avion whispered, and stepped away from the fiend carefully, as green scales, with ferocity and what must’ve been agony, tore through flesh that would’ve normally accepted such changes after so long, and so much practice. Clawing at himself, Tzer wriggled in place, yowling still, his back bubbling visibly from underneath his shirt. Oswald’s look of revulsion made me sad--I would’ve thought he’d be more accepting--but as the fire tried to battle the cold, his look shifted immediately.

I saw pity, not disgust, on his young features.

Especially when whatever was bubbling under that shirt burst forth from Kale’s shoulder blades--the skeletal outlines of broken wings, that slowly fleshed themselves out in leathery, emerald-green sinew, sprouting like plants across Kale’s pale back, which gently melted into sharp scales.

The transformation was gruesome at best, and we all watched with a grim fascination as the demon in him subsided in mindset, and the voices, the cries of pain that made us turn our faces away, were strictly Kale’s. Forced into demon form by a curse, what an awful thing.  We were all facing demons, it seemed tonight--all but Oswald, who seemed to have thus far escaped unscathed, and  I hoped and prayed to almighty whatever-I-could, that it would remain that way--no boy his age (nor Kale’s, no matter how old, really), should have to suffer.

Finally, with a forked-tongue hiss, Kale collapsed wearily against the ground, a flicker of flame slithering forth from between his cracked, ashen-green lips.

“…where’m I?” Kale muttered, his nasally voice confused. I felt a stab of relief, for the first time in what felt like hours. “What’s going on, I--last thing I remember was--was…I…” he swallowed with difficulty, and, glancing up, peered at Avion and the others in turn, and, glancing at his hands, stared. “I-I’m scaly. How did I--”

“There is no TIME,” Avion hissed, and, unsheathing the daggers from his side, he said shortly, “The die has been cast, Mab will sacrifice my sister. Unless we reach the Other Side first. Then this world, as we know it, will crumble.”

“What IS the Other Side, Avion?” I asked coldly. He turned to glance at me, and raised the daggers high. “For all we know, it could be nothing. There is absolutely no reason to trust you now--”

“Except that you have no other choice,” The Seelie replied icily.

I clenched my fists at the silent bastard. Dammit all, he was right, and I saw that Kale, despite his returning confusion, and Oswald, with all his naiveté`--even Simon, with his cynical arguments, could not argue the one, simple truth, that we were stuck in this together now, and whether we liked it or not, we were rather helpless against a force as great as Mab.

With a mighty thrust, Avion abruptly sliced through the air, which, with a howling ripple, split forth in a torrent of waves and sounds and kaleidoscope colors, all flapping in a seamless shift that seemed to pierce reality itself with arrays of dancing lights and roaring wind. The room was thusly thrust into darkness, every color looked dim in comparison. Avion, lowering the knives, turned towards us with a cold and terrifying smile, the smile of a ravenous beast, and he held the knives aloft, over his head--silver eyes gleaming brightly.

“This, my dear companions,” he boomed, against the screaming noise from the tear in the cosmos, “Is. EXCALIBUR.”

The name rang throughout the room and bounced off the walls, ricocheting throughout the yellow room and the violet room beside it. Outside, the hyena-like laughter had ceased, and screams took its place. Simon, drawing himself off the floor with difficulty (for some kind of pressure forced us against the floorboards), shouted his disbelief.

“Wot you mean, ‘EXCALIBUR’?!” He exclaimed. “Ain’t no such thing, just like there isn’t any Arthur either!” Avion, furious, whipped around to point a dagger at Simon’s sightless eyes.

“Worthless, blaspheming whelp!” He snarled. “I did not teach you to speak to me like that! I have half a mind to leave you here--but you may prove useful in the end, if only for leverages sake! Now come! All of you, through the portal!”

He seemed oddly surprised, and slightly put-out to see none of us immediately leap into what was sure to be a fun and exquisite form of death. Avion’s eyebrows rose, and his silver eyes grew flinty. He gestured dramatically towards the portal again.

“Come now!” He bellowed. “We only have but a few moments time! Now in you go! LEAP! NOW!”

“ No offense, mon capitan,” I said lightly. “But I don’t feel the incessant need ter throw myself headlong into a fiery chasm of swirling light, but when I need a good acid trip, I’ll be sure ter come to ye first.”

“Count me out,” Said Kale, sounding vaguely nauseated. “I don’t feel like my body can take much more of this insanity. What the hell did you do to me?”

“Forced a transformation. Broke the seal Mab put on your powers,” Avion said, keeping his words stoically strained. “Simon? Oswald?”

“I-I don’t know, sir,” Oswald said timidly, lifting his head off of the ground with difficulty, worry shining out of every, round aspect of his features. His full-moon face was washed out in the gleaming, glittering lights from beyond the portal. “What the hell is on the other side?”

“Avalon,” Said Simon shortly, and stumbled to his feet, stretching out his hands. He threw himself towards the portal, nearly tripping. “If anyone can cure me, it’s them. Over there. And I want to sa--” He paused, and ‘glanced’ at Avion, whose face was a puzzled masterpiece of confusion--until it seemed something had dawned upon him, and he smiled slightly--then promptly shoved Simon through the slit in reality and into the portal of a hundred thousand lights.

Oswald screeched as Simon vanished from view, and then scrambled to his feet, with all the intent to leap at Avion, yelling,

“You killed him, you killed Simon!”--

Before Avion lifted a bare foot and shoved Oswald into the slit as well. I barely had time to yank myself to my own feet before he was upon Kale, wrestling with the feeble, weakened demon for a moment, trying to get him into the portal. I started for him, this time, intent to stop him--but Avion turned, and with a rap of the pommel of the dagger in his left hand, snapped my body backwards, and with a vacuum-like sucking motion, the portal yanked me in.

It was a terrible sensation, of being torn every which way. Up was down and sideways, left was right and red was green, blue was orange, and so many dazzling lights filled my eyes, my ears, my mouth--even the entirety of existence seemed to fade away, as I dissolved into what felt like a terrified sort of mist, drifting and tingling through a universe that wasn’t, spiraling and un-spiraling, reborn again and again as I passed through countless layers of the cosmos and into a sudden darkness that ended with a wet, squelchy thump.

I groaned faintly, rolling over onto my side to examine where I was, waiting for elasticity to return to a body that felt stiff and cold from my descent from--hell knows where. It was not unlike my journey through the Nexus, actually, although much more mind-boggling and breathtaking in an entirely new way. I’d never done drugs, but if I had, I was sure that perhaps if I did, that would’ve been exactly my experience with them.

I was lying on a wet form of grass that smelled vaguely like spices, and it was damp and cool, but with a light touch of late summer or early autumn in the air, mingling with the dim, flickering dance of fireflies. I sat up slowly, surprisingly and gingerly without pain, flexing and rolling back certain limbs that felt sore. I tasted something like copper in my mouth, and presumed I’d bitten my tongue, somehow. The grass was a bright, startling green beneath me, and gazing upwards at the full moon (full? It had been mere gibbous when I’d--left, wait--)

Where was I? This was Avalon?

I stood up slowly, with half a mind to call out to the others, but a figure nearby drew my attention first.

It was walking along a roadside, which was a dirt and beaten path, underneath the moon. Its shaggy head was bowed, as if in thought or prayer, and dark horns atop its head swayed from side to side as it moved, not unlike monks who chant prayers and swing incense. In its hands, it carried a short sword, gleaming black and gray in the shadowy light. Its bulging green robes fluttered around it ferociously, and, as it slithered closer, I realized it was coming for me.

I did the most manly thing imaginable.  Arnold  Swarchenegger could not have contended with my masculinity.

I let out a death-defying shriek, (yes, shriek, ugh, shut up), kicked up my heels, and sprinted in the opposite direction, towards the trees. My blessed peripheral vision seemed never to fail me, for I saw the green-robed figure speed up, gaining with ease, the monstrous beast tailing me close as it could.

Eventually, graceful as I am, and no Seelie man at best, my foot snagged a root and I went down. I hit the dirty grass hard, and, scrambling backwards, held up my fists warily as the beast approached, shuffling closer and tossing its sword menacingly from hand to hand as if trying to seize the best place to cut me within the confines of its hollow eyes.

“What do ye want?!” I demanded, holding up my hands relentlessly. “Speak, ye wee devil, if ye can!”

The monster’s head lifted, then rose completely upwards, prying away from the neck with ease. To my utter shock, it was a mask. And there, standing behind it, framed by the dark, jade-green of the wilderness and forests, was a pair of slanted eyes, set in a face of cool cream and pert, smiling lips--a face shaded by a square bobcut of deepest brunet.

“Took you guys long enough to get here,” Maria said, and promptly slammed her tiny sword into the earth before me, leaning against it, and smiling good-naturedly into what was assuredly the best expression of surprise since the scream of the boy in Home Alone.