Rituals of Samhain Ch. 09

For the first time in a long, long time, Hallows Eve approached with a peculiar uneasiness in the air. All around the world, things went bump in the night. In an isolated part New South Wales, a man spent the month convinced a creature lurked in the shadows of his ranch, stealing away livestock to work its way up to snatching the man himself. In Munich, an old woman swore she saw a pair of figures drenched in blood dancing on a rooftop. Across South America, seven hundred and twelve men, all born on the same day, reported a visit in the middle of the night from a woman dressed in blue silk and possessed by a near vengeful desire for sexual gratification. Some denied her, causing her to instantaneously vanish. Others accepted her and, seemingly as a result, developed an extreme aversion to cats and the color yellow.

Most people noticed nothing different. They didn't notice their urgency to get home before dark or to triple check the locks on their doors at night. The religious spent a little more time on their prayers, and the non-religious spent a little more time bathed in the light of the secular world. Both groups felt the press of something otherworldly on the edges of the shadows, and neither had much interest in examining that press too closely. Other things, non-human things, stirred for the first time in centuries. Many of them remained caged in places like the Coven house where Grimbough kept an eye on things. Others emerged from forgotten places and did horrible things. In these cases, the horrible things happened to horrible people, which is the best one can hope for when it comes to the horrid.

The winds of magic shifted and stirred with each passing day. More doors and more hallways appeared in the witches' abode. Nea and Tabby spent their remaining time before the Feast preparing and storing magical energy. Conach worked as a congenial host for the variety of creatures they'd created over the past month. None of them gave him too much trouble, though Stacy was quite particular about the management of her ranch. Conach enjoyed the responsibility with his only complaint being that Nea and Tabby couldn't make time to visit the various creatures with him. All of them, though, began to think of life after Samhain. Conach wouldn't be returning to Fae. Nor would Tabby return to her life of isolation and dark studies. Instead, they would go on living together in the Coven's house with a full eleven months before their next urgent worry about the fate of the world cropped up. At least, they hoped.

Of the three, Nea had the least trouble imagining her life going forward because she'd been imagining the same life for as long as she could remember. It terrified her more that the imagined life would soon become a reality. Idle time for magical pursuits, a pair of lovers with complete devotion not only to her, but each other, and a house filled with doors to all sorts of places to explore. Grimbough kept alluding to a lengthy list of issues he needed assistance with. In their conversations, Ineni mentioned unspeakable horrors threatening to burst upon the world in the way someone might mention potential rain on Tuesday. A heavy obligation to deal with various sorts of doom did loom over everything, but such was a witch's life, even a nymphomantic one. Nea took the good with the bad, and she eagerly awaited the chance to lunge headfirst into her new responsibilities.

First, they needed to hold the Feast. As promised, Ineni, Edgar, and Grimbough led the charge on making arrangements. Nea did help where she was needed, but the crux of her involvement occurred on Halloween itself. Grimbough brought the Coven to a large stone arch built into the wall at the end of one of the sprawling corridors. Nea and Conach recognized many of the markings on the iron door contained within the arch as identical to the ones which had appeared on the door used to summon the fae. "A magical lock, as you can see," Grimbough explained. "Only witches can open this one."

Nea could see the strands of magic tied around the door and linked to the various runes. With deft hands, she touched each in sequence and watched the small lightshow as the magical bonds unraveled. Conach did the honor of actually pulling the great iron handle and letting the door swing open. A rush of cool, moist air flooded through the opening, and they stepped inside. Beyond the door was a grassy amphitheater surrounded by doors of all shapes and sizes. A few even floated in midair while others hung against the fabric of reality itself, always appearing to be facing the observer, no matter which way they approached. Most of the doors looked dormant, but a few glittered with magic.

"The sky is different," Tabby observed, head craned toward the stars. "The stars are at the wrong angle."

"This is Faerie," Conach said. "Part of it, anyway. The part that merges in to other realities. Walk in any direction long enough, and you'll wind up right back here. As worlds go, this one is both small and infinite. Unbounded, filling in all the gap between one world and the next, whichever that might be. Never made an ounce of fucking sense to me."

Nea walked down the short hill from their door, admiring the place with wonder. The grass waved in a pleasant breeze. Every other blade of it was blue rather than green, giving it the effect of mirroring the slightly changing shades of the night sky overhead. She didn't see a moon or any other source of light, but she could see quite well in the pale luminescence of the strange world. Beyond the amphitheater was a lake of pure silver. While either direction to her side stretched endlessly with the blue-green grass, before her, the silver ocean seemed to invite her to wade into it, walking out into an eternity of shifting, shimmering water. Nea withdrew one of her magical prisms from a pocket.

Tabby joined her at the side of the strange water. "There's so much of it. Does it all work like the Witcheye? Could we make a dozen of them and have picture in picture?"

"No idea," Nea answered. "I think it might be alive or sentient to some degree. Not sure taking some without permission would be wise." Nea took hold of Tabby's hand, closed her eyes, and whispered words of offering. As she did the small prism floated out over the lake, dropping down to skim along the surface.

The mercurial water rippled. A small arm rose out and enveloped the magical gift, drawing it down beneath the water. With a violent swirl, a massive torrent shot up into the sky before arcing out in six different directions. Like waterfalls of molten silver, the water formed into immense floating monoliths, six of them looming on the horizon. As they solidified, bright, violet light cracked through the surface of each, etching words on their faces which glowed over the gathering area.

"It's like we're standing in the Witcheye basin," Conach said, voice trembling with awe.

"Try to pace out your astonishment," Nea warned. "It's only going to get weirder."

From behind them, Grimbough swept into the clearing, followed closely behind by Ineni and Edgar. While the mouse woman seemed impressed, the others barely acknowledged the world around them. Grimbough stood to the side as a small army of goblins tromped through the door carrying all sorts of things — chairs, tables, boxes, crates, odd statues, altars, yard games, cauldrons, a few microwaves for some reason.

Ineni and Tabby followed some of the goblins around the massive amphitheater, directing them where to put things while also settling their strange disputes and spritzing them with magic when they got distracted with each other's bodies. Conach stayed with Nea as she began to work through another complex spell for uniting the energies of the different monoliths. He didn't have much to do other than offer emotional support so he watched the parade of furnishings with amusement to pass the time.

After the goblins came Edgar's own militia of miscreant dough-balls. After the goblins set up a part of the amphitheater as a field kitchen, the dough-balls went to work stoking fires, connecting magical electric outlets (a permission granted by proxy from Edgar), and laying out supplies. Their brethren carried through platters of meats, non-sentient doughs, some pre-cooked dishes, boxes of pizza stolen from various shops, pies, cakes, whole skewered pigs, ethereal dishes, strange things which only Conach would consider eating, and dozens of other foodstuffs.

Grimbough joined the fray setting up the tables in specific areas near specific doors. He supervised the table settings specialized to creatures of all sorts. While they didn't receive many responses, the gourd-man insisted on being prepared for any unannounced arrivals. Conach caught his ear at one point while stealing some food and asked how Grimbough could leave the house. "I haven't, technically," the steward explained. "This realm is currently an extension of the Coven house. Even if it wasn't, I am perfectly permitted to go where I please, assuming the mistress gives me permission."

Conach considered reminding Grimbough that needing permission isn't exactly a state of blanket permitted, but they'd been getting along better lately, and Conach didn't want to sour their progress.

The hours ticked by out in the earthly realm. The sun moved over the Coven house, but in the realm of the Feast, the ethereal light remained constant. Only the growing appetites, both for food and sex, gave any indication of the passage of time. Both appetites were stoked by the wafting smells and energy upon the air. Nea's work charged everyone and everything with a fervent need to fuck. Perhaps more potent, though, was Edgar's mastery of cooking filling the amphitheater with the scent of foods unimaginable. Conach swore Edgar had somehow dug into his memories and remade a dish once enjoyed on the cliffs overlooking Queen Titania's summer cottage.

Eventually, Nea concluded her spellwork. While the majority of the creatures in the glade saw nothing different, the magically attuned could see an intricate latticework of magical energy binding the six ominous stones to each other and to a point between them. The effort left Nea tired and strained. She took the opportunity to sneak off with Conach for a quickie before the guests arrived.

* * * * *

With the hour approaching, Conach and Grimbough went to retrieve their wards. Some arrived of their own will. The vampires, Lucas and Priscilla, glided through the doorway with grace. The ghosts, Beverly and Thomas, arrived on a phantasmal motorcycle which caused a tittering stir among the goblins and garnered a wearied gaze from Grimbough. Conach nudged him in his stick-ribs with a comment about high spirits before they returned to the house to fetch others.

Next came the werewolves, Sasha and Micah. They arrived in human form, dressed as though attending a casual evening wedding. They were the first to truly gawk with pure astonishment at the cosmic world around them. When they managed to control their amazement, they oscillated back to horror at the various creatures around them. Nea greeted them, and Tabby spent a while explaining things. The vampire pair made decent hosts as well. Priscilla chatted with the ghosts, and Lucas empathized with the werewolves.

The smiling, squeaking foursome of latex ladies came next. Their incessant smirks and lewd touching made the others a little uncomfortable at first, but beyond that Meadow and the other girls seemed cheerful and pleasant. The slime girls helped offset the latex bunch's strangeness. With their full body transformations, the odder creatures of the menagerie related to one another well enough. Only Ethan, the slime girls' consort, felt wholly out of place. Of the whole lot, he was still human, albeit fairly magically enhanced. Conach greeted him warmly, having spent the past week changing Ethan's body to be better suited to his goo girl harem's demands.

Lastly, Stacy the Dryad was escorted into the clearing by Grimbough. The pumpkin man seemed absolutely infatuated with the transformed woman and labored extensively to make her stay with the Coven a happy one. Nea and the others didn't know if Grimbough could love, but thought that if he could, he was madly in love with the plant woman. Since her time in the fake alien ship, Stacy had birthed the Seed, completing her transformation into a small deity of nature. Her hair was a wavy pelt of moss and grass dotted with flowers and leaves. Her skin shone like white birch, making her fulsome body exude a grandiose sexuality that only the slime girls could match at the moment. Grimbough brought her over to the table with the others, kissed her hand, and returned to his duties. Stacy managed to bond with the others over her humanity, however little remained of it. By the time the first door opened, the Coven's menagerie was laughing, drinking, and teasing one another.

Across the clearing, a door which looked to have been torn off of a castle glowed to life and opened. From within came a tromping series of trumpeters in full plate armor. They clanked and honked and whistled as they marched in a small circle around their designated table. Other ghosts paraded through, merry and singing. The Reveler's Court poured into the amongst the cacophony. The Reveler himself came in a palanquin drizzling a goblet of wine across his half ethereal body. Nea and the other witches approached to greet him. "Lord Reveler, thank you for coming."

The man's eyes fixed on Nea. "Of course, little witch. As you can see, after your little gift, I have been able to bring back the Revel. New souls have such interesting ideas. Yesterday, I recruited a young woman who died from choking herself with a belt while having her boyfriend fuck her in the ass. He died too of, well let's say shock. As soon as we put his head back together, I'm going to make them put on a show of how they went out." He dropped out of his seat and swept over to stand in front of Nea. "I do love the festivities. Streamers, look at that, and balloons? No more gutted cats or bundles of burnt wood as decoration. You are just what all this old frivolity needed."

Nea offered a curtsy. "Our chef has prepared foods which your court should be able to enjoy." She gestured to a small troop of dough-balls carrying platters over to the Reveler's table.

"You poked old Edgar back to life, too?" the Lord Reveler said. "I must go say hello. Maybe he'll finally let me eat a piece of him."

Another door opened, one made of glittering wood boughs. From within came a small contingent of creatures who looked mostly human. A few had horns, some had tails of varying lengths, others had faun ears, and a few had diaphanous wings. Conach wrapped his arm in with Nea's and approached the group from Faerie together. "Greetings," Nea said, "from the Coven of Samhain. We're pleased to have you with us."

"Conach? Is this where you've gotten off to?" the lead fae said. The tall female's ears twitched as she stepped forward on cloven hooves. Unlike Conach, her skin was solid blue.

"Lady Lorra," Conach said with a nervous grin. "How wonderful to see you."

"Is it?" the fae said with a sniff. She turned her attention to Nea. "Are you keeping his leash short? Young ones are always full of heart and spunk, but prone to mischief. No telling the amount of trouble he could get up to if you let him." She bowed, "I am Lady Lorra of the Eastern Lakes. The Queen and King of Faerie send their warmest regards to the Coven of Samhain, as well as their congratulations on reconstitution of the order, and also their regrets for being unable to attend themselves. The demands of Faerie have required a substantial amount of their attention."

"We're honored," Nea said. "Please, enjoy the festivities."

Lady Lorra nodded, but took a moment to grab Nea's arm. She smiled warmly, "We are happy to be here," she said. "When the Queen announced the old Faebind had been restored, well, I was the first to volunteer for this. When I was still a maiden, I loved the Feast of Samhain. I hope we'll find some time together before it ends. Humans are such delightful partners."

Other doors opened, too. A few lost courts of humans arrived, perplexed by the passage of time but seemingly pleased to be out of their bubbles. A group of centaurs arrived and made a beeline to the Faerie delegation. Men dressed in monk attire introduced themselves as a delegation of Wardens. While they offered pleasant enough greetings, all the others creatures regarded them with suspicion, and they declined to participate in either food or festivity. Elsewhere, a group of humanoid creatures dressed in archaic attire with beetle black eyes didn't so much arrive as simply appear. One introduced himself as Thaddeus, but they all seemed slightly out of phase with the world around them. They stayed near one another and promised to only observe, which Nea thought was for the best. One door cracked open with a plume of smoke and the smell of sulfur as its herald. From within came a pair of red skinned devils called Makaeth and Sindrel. They made swift introductions before gathering a small contingent of goblins for some raucous fun.

The August Coven hobbled through their door. They chatted with Nea and Tabby before going to their table. A few of the Warden group went over to talk to them, but Nea didn't think it was an amicable conversation.

Another door slowly transformed into ceder wreathed in red and green ribbons and old Christmas lights. From within came a tall man who looked astonishingly like Santa. He introduced himself as one in the same, "Santa is more of a title," he explained. "I'm Liam, and I'm afraid this might all be my fault."

Elfie, the fae with him, who look like a lewdly dressed mall-elf, patted his arm, "Another time. They're busy. We're very happy to be here though. Ecstatic to find out another of the Faebinds is up and running."

Liam made a rumbling laugh, "Oh yes, we should find the door between our two houses, I think. Set up some kind of diplomatic exchange or...whatever. You have to learn this stuff pretty fast as I'm sure you know." He gave Conach a hard pat on the back, "Mrs. Claus would love you. She's back looking after all the kids. Drew the short straw on that one."

"Kids?" Nea asked, surprised.

Santa's eye sparkled, "Yes. There's a whole wide universe right in front of you, Nea. Find us after all this, and we'll talk." He gave her a big hug before waving to his gaggle of followers and moving off to their table.

And more still came. Some arrived while not actually occupying a physical space. They acknowledged Nea with a wave and nothing more. Many looked human in part or in whole. She thought she recognized a variety of gods who seemed pleased to see one another. Other singular visitors lurked on the edge of the event. Some of these exuded malice, and others created a chill in the air when Nea thought too much about them. She greeted them all the same.

In the sliver of reality that contained the Coven house, the moon reached its peak. Clocks started to chime. In the amphitheater a final door opened, from which a man emerged. He was old, but fit, stripped to the waist and walking with a long staff. A white head of hair merged with a chest length beard. All the other guests settled at their tables as this man strode across the clearing and stood beside the still waters of the silver lake. Nea made her way over to him, standing a bit behind him as he leaned on his staff waiting.

Another door, one hung in the air above the lake itself, opened. A dark, immense shadow poured through, rolling across the lake until it formed in front of the old man. It took the shape of a massive raven, black eyes fixed on the man in front of it. The man didn't react except to glance over his shoulder at Nea, "So, you're the witch responsible for all of this?" His voice sounded like mountains falling. It went to every ear around the clearing.