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“It’s you.”
The words drip from Matthew’s lips unbidden, akin to the wisps of black that continuously drift off the outstretched primaries of his sudden opposite like morning dew from a blade of grass. It’s not the first thing he’d like to hear himself say after appearing alone in this... place... which definitely isn’t the Dreaming Archives. ‘It’s you’ barely takes fourth place, after ‘What the fuck’, ‘Where am I’ and ‘Aaaaah!’. And yet it is the only thing that makes the way from his mind to his tongue. Because it is it. The shape from the battlefield. The hole in his dreams. Right there before him.
The entity contrasts harshly with its surroundings. It’s... a horse. But at the same time, it really isn’t. Nine intricately carved thrones frame a painting of fur so black it could just as well be tar, dripping down the back and neck of the creature, forming long tendrils into strands of hair weightlessly drifting in the gentle breeze. The entire clearing seems to bow around it, trees curving, their roots straining against the anchor of the earth. An audience of freshly sprouted green shoots cheers from the gallery of grasping branches for this stage that has been set up. But in the spotlight stands only a semi-gaseous, vaguely equine void. It has wings – open, not quite flared, not threatening, but still imposing, like a bird ready for take-off. Pegasus is the word that comes to Matthew’s mind, but the folklore he’s been told pales in comparison to what his eyes are seeing, so he’s unsure just how applicable it is. From the entity’s forehead, two gazelle-like horns spiral upwards, pointing towards the open sky. Below, where a horse would have kind dark eyes, the entity’s are a deep flaming red, emanating an undulating glow in the twilight that surrounds them. It should be off-putting, reminiscent of the irises of a beast reflecting in the dark, but somehow surrounded by the fog it instead evokes a sun setting deep over the horizon. Or maybe rising.
It doesn’t belong here, and yet it does; it’s the perfectly shaped hole in a puzzle yet to be completed.
“It’s... you”, Matthew repeats, mainly because that’s one thing he can do. He takes a step forward – that’s another thing he can do. For a moment, he expects his foot to just phase through the ground, as if the whole clearing and the forest around it were merely an illusion. But the earth is damp and soft underneath his boot. The entity cocks its head, fixating him as he cautiously approaches. “I’ve seen you. In my dreams”, he says, unsure if this very moment is another instance of those. “What do you want from me?”
The entity’s ears swivel forward as it blinks at Matthew with uncannily humanoid bemusement. “Want?”, it repeats, and Matthew stumbles backwards, almost falling flat on his ass: “Y-you talk?!”
The bemusement turns to amusement: “What made you presume I do not?” Its voice is silky, like black velvet, layered with the babbling of a stream somewhere in the forest out of view. It’s not like a Sending, the sounds clearly rings outside Matthew’s head, but it keeps a dreamlike resonance that makes its exact source ever so ephemeral. The entity doesn’t move its jaw when it speaks. Matthew isn’t quite sure if that makes it better or worse.
“I- I don’t know, you never talked before! What-... who-...”, Matthew takes a deep breath, gathering himself as much as he can, “Who are you? What are you?”
“Who am I? What am I?”, the entity repeats again. It tilts its head, as if it had to think about the answer. “I am the first breath of fresh morning air”, it then says, the conviction in its voice begetting it was not the answer itself it had to think about but its wording, “I am the sound of chains bursting. I am the force of a cresting wave and the shimmer of the North Star in the darkest night. I am the arrival at a new place. I am change. I am perseverance. I am freedom.” It lowers its head and its wings, which fails to make it less imposing. “You may call me Cernunnos.”
There is a chance he is dreaming right now. Maybe he hit an asteroid or something on the way through the void, got knocked out cold. This could all be a hallucination. Which, in fairness, doesn’t really change the situation at hand, because no matter if it’s real or not, he has never gotten the chance to talk to the apparition in his dreams before, and this is the best opportunity he will probably ever see, so why not seize it. He pinches himself in the tail anyway, just as a precaution. The entity remains. Matthew swallows. “You didn’t answer my question”, he says, trying and failing to not sound squeaky, “What do you want?”
Something metallic clinks when the entity – Cernunnos? – takes a step forward and approaches him. Eyes following the sound, Matthew can see that there is a heavy iron shackle wrapped around one of the pegasus’ front ankles, attached to a couple links of equally heavy chain, the last of which is broken in half. It speaks again: “I require nothing from you. I simply wanted...”, Matthew doesn’t miss the extra emphasis the entity puts on the word, almost as if to mock him, “...to greet you.” It playfully cocks its head: “Since you and your herd are so blindly falling through my domain.”
“Where are they? What have you done to them?”
“So quick to accuse. Do not worry, they are fine. Safe at your destination. You are the only one I took liberty to pluck from your astral flight.”
“Why did you take me away from them?”
“You keep asking the same question with different words. I wished to talk to you.” Cernunnos swishes his tail and his voice takes on the amused undertone again: “If you need me to be more specific: I wished to talk to you. Not them. And since I enjoy the privilege of moving freely between realms, I briefly... diverted your path.” The glowing red eyes squint, like the face of a horse was attempting a humanoid smile: “Do not worry, I plan to send you back unharmed and timely.”
Okay, so this is truly not just a wrong turn the portal sent Matthew on, but deliberate handiwork by this Cernunnos-entity to split him from the rest and bring him... here. Wherever ‘here’ is. He has the feeling that the nine thrones in the background should tell him something, but his brain only recognizes that there is a pattern, not what it points to. He’ll have to ask Omeria about that later. The fact alone that he was sent here, even ignoring the personal history he has with the apparition, implies power, and the casualness with which it is wielded implies danger. Cernunnos doesn’t seem hostile... yet... or at least not aggressive; the intimidation seems more accidental than deliberate posturing. Nevertheless, he should be careful. “What are you?”, he repeats his third question, trying to puzzle together the pieces that he’s only just realized belong to a larger picture.
“People have given my nature many names and classifications over the centuries. I think the current one in use is Archfey?”, Cernunnos says, “A terribly small word, methinks.”
Matthew squints: “...like the butterfly lady?” He’s way out of his depth in this regard. Fey, druidism, folklore, all that was heathenism and shunned from education. This is all Omeria’s field of expertise. Omeria isn’t here right now, but if Cernunnos is one of them, maybe he knows more. “Who is she?”, he asks wearily, “Exactly, I mean. All we know is her name.”
A shiver runs through Cernunnos’ darkness, making it curl and dance as if something had passed through the fog. “The Vermillion Duchess”, he says, “A greedy one is she. Always seeking to take, to grow, to spread. Like a plague.”
“What do you know of that plague? How do we cure it?” Matthew pauses, squinting at the pegasus, trying to assess the mystical non-committal statements it has uttered so far: “Or are you working with her?”
Another shiver; Cernunnos rears his head, bearing his teeth: “I would rather pluck my own wings!”
“Well, you must have some kind of motivation in bringing me here”, Matthew angrily points out, “I refuse to believe it’s just coincidence.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“It rarely ever is.”
“Clever Tiefling.” Cernunnos cocks his head: “You seek to oppose the Vermillion Duchess, do you not?”
Matthew feels his jaw set and his face harden as the pieces click into place. It wants something. Of course. What else would it be. “We do”, he affirms anyway. Maybe there is at least information to be gained here.
“Then I believe our causes may be aligned. You see, I do not particularly like her.”
“So what, you’re looking for an expendable mortal to do your bidding?”, Matthew bites. He’s not quite sure why this makes him so angry. Maybe he had hoped that the one thing that led him to abandon the Lightbringer’s road was not just the same brick painted differently. Maybe he shouldn’t have presumed. What did he expect from vague dreams, leaving just enough room for interpretation for his mind to fill in the blanks. Anger is justified, and it’s much easier to process than shame for feeling betrayed in the first place. Cernunnos’ eye flashes red: “Watch your tone. I understand the background you come from, but I do not intend to use you for my bidding.”
“Then use me for what, rallying me against this Duchess you dislike so I may get you a leg up in your petty squabbles?” Matthew scoffs: “What makes you different from her then, huh?”
Cernunnos’ body swells as he fully unfolds his enormous black wings, large enough to engulf the sky above the clearing. Shadow radiates off them, rising into the air like fog from the treetops at dawn. Between the plumage glimmer distant lights, as if they were gateways to the same star-spangled beyond Álvaro and he glimpsed between the roots of the structure that led them here. Matthew’s eyes catch on a constellation he recognizes, framed between ones entirely alien to him. Hundreds of night skies atop hundreds of horizons. “I am nothing like them”, Cernunnos proclaims, voice reverberating all the way up to the treetops.
Matthew instinctively ducked down, suddenly keenly aware that he is alone in this place between places, alone with an entity whose motivations and moral codes he does not understand and where a single misstep might actually get him killed. “How am I to know?!”, he fires back, voice catching a desperate edge. The mask develops a crack and Matthew can’t stop what’s beneath from leaking out – the fear; the fear of getting caught in the same cycle yet again, of of having his trust so wholeheartedly shattered that he couldn’t dream to put it in someone’s hands again for fear of it falling apart again at the slightest touch.
With the fear comes shame, and with the shame comes guilt, and with the guilt comes even more shame and even more fear, all of which he tries to gather up in the quick second his voice needs to stop breaking before he continues: “We’ve spoken for a total of five minutes. No matter how many months you’ve been in my dreams, all I have is your word. And from all I know about Fey, they like to be cagey with the truth.”
There is a subtle shift within Cernunnos’ body language. Even being fine-tuned around the moods of horses, Matthew is sure he’d miss it if he hadn’t happened to look at the right time: The slight twist of the ears, the shifting of weight off the hindquarters, the lowering of the tail to where it melts back into the charcoal fog. From defensive to... paying attention? He can’t quite get a read on it.
“Maybe you’ve been watching me through my dreams or whatever and think we’re more closely acquainted but... I don’t know you”, Matthew continues. “And therefore I can’t trust you.” He represses the urge to add I’m sorry to the end.
Silence, filled only with the exotic birdsong of the surrounding canopy, eventually broken by a ruffle of feathers when Cernunnos folds his wings and takes a step in Matthew’s direction. The movement has lost any and all aggression. “You may not have seen me”, Cernunnos says while he slowly strides over and languidly rounds Matthew, “But you do know me. You have felt me, have you not?” One wing flexes and a long black feather catches Matthew’s forearm, painting an inky trail of shadow onto his skin. It feels cool like the cold side of the pillow on a hot summer’s night. “When another burdened you with light that is intended to guide but blinds you to the detail of night around you, have you not felt me as you pushed it into the sea?” Matthew turns when the pegasus steps behind him, trying to keep him in his periphery. “When you sought to redeem your captain in the eyes of those who shunned him, have you not felt me as you engulfed them in darkness? And when all hope seemed lost in the frigid tomb, have you not felt me when you rallied your very foes against their own ruler?”
“You know about all that?”
“I know all that touches me, just as all that touches me knows me.”
“What? What the fuck does that mean?!”
Cernunnos shifts the weight back and forth on his shoulders, dancing left and right, obviously trying to distill down a larger concept into a form he thinks Matthew can understand. Somehow, that makes him even more angry. He doesn’t like being talked down to, he doesn’t like being at the lower lever-end of knowledge, and he doesn’t like being reminded that there are so many things he doesn’t know yet. Even Vihani, who has just woken up and didn’t even know how to talk right, knows more than him about magic and physics and whatever else they haven’t discovered yet.
“One does not need to know of me to know me”, Cernunnos says, “A Fey’s power is forever connected to their domain, be that physical or metaphysical. They are proportional, waxing and waning together. The Vermillion Duchess is one who seeks control – she lays claim to territory with no regard to the souls inhabiting it. She yearns to break free of her plane and blanket all other worlds in her veil of red, until she can see everywhere her eye-winged children flutter. And through that unnatural sickness, she has now found a way for control without disobedience.” Cernunnos’ hoof scrapes across the dirt repeatedly. “I greatly dislike this.”
“And your domain?”, Matthew follows the setup the pegasus is presenting. Something glints in Cernunnos’ eyes, a spark from a fireplace or maybe a shooting star; he lifts his head and puffs out his chest almost proudly: “I represent one of the oldest and most profound concepts of sentient kind. My domain stretches to wherever there is a spark of change that could grow into a fire. To act in accord with that is to act in accord with me. I am the space between spaces, the one that connects all else.”
“Or you could be bluffing.”
Cernunnos motions with his wings, quite skillfully approximating a humanoid shrug: “I refuse to cloak myself in false humility.”
Matthew snorts: “So you’re what, my guilt and anxiety?”
Cernunnos shakes his mane and whinnies, which sounds way too much like a laugh. “Mortals”, he nickers, “You are so funny.” He trots further along the clearing, always keeping one ear twisted in Matthew’s direction: “I can see a creature’s nature, if you will. I can see how many chains are wrapped around its heart, weighing it down.”
“And you want to rid them of all they’re tied to? Of everything? No attachments?”
Cernunnos shakes his head: “A chain and a tether are not the same, even if your eyes have trouble telling them apart. And you still don’t understand.”
“Well, you’re doing a terrible job explaining.”
The pegasus’ tail twitches in something that could be equally irritation, annoyance or amusement: “They call me Chainbreaker, but I am not the one who breaks the chains. I simply grant the power to do so. To perceive them, to weaken them. To shatter them.” He trots even further behind Matthew, forcing him to turn if he wants to keep an eye on the pegasus. His body language betrays ease and relaxation now, though with all Cernunnos has said, Matthew chalks that up less to trust and more to him simply not perceiving Matthew as a threat. Cernunnos noses a tree branch, then turns his head back to Matthew suddenly attentive, as if something had come to mind: “You must know I was not there for you or your pack of lions that day, right?”
Matthew pulls a face: “I figured.” It was not very hard to deduce, given how the vision showed the pegasus opposite the cavalry and all that. “It’s not my pack of lions, though.”
Cernunnos lifts his head: “Ah, but it was, wasn’t it? Were you not the one who led the charge, your warriors behind you, ready to tear into your prey?”
“At least lions hunt prey to survive and feed their young. I don’t think the comparison is apt.”
The ears on Cernunnos’ head swivel proudly as he shifts his weight to his hindquarters, shuffling his front hooves. It reminds Matthew of the stallions back home doing a happy little dance whenever one of the mares would pass by their paddock. The chain rattles across the ground as Cernunnos scrapes at it: “This! This is what I am saying! One can only heed the call if he is already listening!”
“I...” The words catch in Matthew’s throat. He can make out the picture Cernunnos is getting at now, but it is way too big and terrifying to grasp or hold. There was a safety in the assumption that something led him away, or astray, a comfort in the vocabulary of delegating the blame to some nebulous force so that the memory of the faithful soldier may remain untarnished. Despite carrying his own self-pity for so long, the weight of his own decisions proves even heavier. “Why me?”, he croaks.
Another laugh: “Such vanity, to think yourself the only one that saw me.” Before Matthew can process that information and react to it, Cernunnos tilts his head to the side, focusing Matthew with an ancient red eye. “Such courage, to be amongst the few who acted”, he adds, placating.
“I... I don’t understand. I thought you saved me.”
Cernunnos shakes his head like a human would. “You misconstrue my nature, little Tiefling. It is true, I reside in strife. Wherever there are those that aim to push their world upon others, there too is I, pushing against. Those carrying the yoke and the chains are under my protection. But where others of my kin-”, he flares his lip, exposing his teeth, “-would use this as a chance to widen their influence, I do not.” He twists one ear into Matthew’s direction: “Do not misunderstand me – It is well within my capabilities. I simply refuse to.” He lifts his head, ears back at full attention, and focuses Matthew head-on, not like a horse but like a predator: “Hear my words and heed the truth within: It is not my grand design to enslave you, nor any other creature on this plane or beyond. I do not have a grand design, least of all that which I abhor most above all.” Matthew’s eyes instinctively drift down to the shackle around Cernunnos’ ankle. “So, let me speak plainly”, Cernunnos continues, less confrontational, “No, I did not save you, Matthew. I gave you a chance to save yourself.”
Matthew doesn’t know what to say to that, so he says nothing. He doesn’t feel like protesting would get him anywhere. But the words don’t really want to make their way in either. It’s like trying to put more stuff into a box that is already full, finding no space and simply balancing it on top. Precariously. Cernunnos continues: “And now I wish to give you the chance to save others.” His voice takes on a cheeky character: “Or is your contempt towards me so great you would forsake your cause of ending the suffering of the Eidolowda under her vermillion conquest?”
“Do not put words in my mouth”, Matthew growls. He stares at the Archfey, unsure what to do with this information. On one hand, Cernunnos seems to be sincere about his declaration of principle. On the other hand, his very request here seems to violate that principle, at least from where Matthew is standing. He can’t quite get a read. “So you do require something from me.”
“I require nothing. I offer my help.”
“What would you have me do that you can help with? In theory?”
“If your aim is already to oppose the Vermillion Duchess, I would simply have you proceed. With my aid, of course.”
“So you are promising power?”
“You have a way of twisting one’s words into shapes of different connotations, clever Tiefling.”
“I like to think I’m untwisting. I’m finding that I don’t like talking around stuff. It makes conversation tedious and obtuse.”
“Yes, I would promise you power.”
“What do you get in return?”
“Ideally, the Vermillion Duchess driven back.”
“Ideally?”
“There is always a chance you might fail. Such is life.”
“And in that case you would what, look for the next soul?”
“You are probing for holes in a net, Matthew. It may not be a solid as a bucket, but it can hold fish just as secure.”
“I don’t think that metaphor holds any water.”
“No, it does not.” Cernunnos whinnies: “After all, it is not a bucket.”
Matthew scrunches his face. He is getting caught in distraction. Maybe he is missing something. “Is that all you would get out of this? The Vermillion Duchess out of Eidolon? Nothing else?”
Cernunnos lowers his head, nickering quietly: “I sense that me being fundamentally of my kin makes this hard to bring across, but my wants and needs are very simple. I do not ask for fealty, nor do I ask for loyalty. I simply ask: Will you accept my aid?”
“I...”, Matthew loses the fight against the urge to scan his surroundings for means to a quick exit. This is the worst. The tactician in his head knows well enough that if they want to accomplish anything in face of a full-blown invasion of Eidolon, they need aid – He who wields the sword shalt see to keep it sharpened and such. But he cannot give a committal answer, not right now. Not when he’s basically been ambushed, and not when he’s seen what happened to Àlvaro after Srota, and not when he can’t rule out that it won’t bite his friends in the ass later. At least if he declines right now, the biggest danger is that it will bite only him. “...I can’t.” This time, he says it out loud: “I’m sorry.”
Cernunnos’ ears droop. Matthew takes a step back, lifting his hands: “I don’t mean to offend! I will gladly take the information you have, uh, provided me with! I’m sure it will help us greatly in our task! But I’m not going to participate in a...”, he curls his lips, fishing for the right word that won’t offend the only Archfey that doesn’t like to think of himself as ‘making deals’, “...an exchange.”
“I understand”, Cernunnos says, but there is a layer of genuine disappointment in his voice that twists something uncomfortable deep inside Matthew’s gut. He takes another step back, like he could escape the feeling. The pegasus shakes his head, flinging droplets of shadow from his mane: “It is... refreshing to see that I am not exempt from my own principle.” Matthew can’t quite determine the tone of his voice and it puts him on edge. He’s expected pushback, coercion, more promises, maybe even anger. Not the verbal equivalent of a shrug. “Very well”, Cernunnos continues, “I will leave you to your investigations. Be aware that the offer does not expire, though. If you ever change your mind, I will be waiting in your shadow.” Creepy and mildly threatening, Matthew thinks but doesn’t dare to voice it.
Cernunnos spreads his wings again and this time they are even larger than before. The feathers scrape across the sky and wipe the wisps of blue off the firmament, leaving deep orange and star-spangled violets in their wake. Around Matthew’s feet, the shadows of each grass blade grow long, longer, until he stands in the epicenter of a black and blue crater of indeterminate light source. The trees seem almost translucent now, stars shimmering between bark and foliage, as if they were never real to begin with, just an illusion to make him feel more comfortable. With a tailwind picking up and whipping his cloak against his thighs, Matthew feels almost weightless. He tightens his grip around the sword handle, just to have something steady to hold onto.
“You cling to the burdens of your past because their weight feels familiar”, Cernunnos’ voice echoes over the clearing, “I wonder, if you only let go, how high you could soar.”
Matthew opens his mouth to reply something, but as the stars around him increase in brightness, he suddenly can’t get enough air to speak. In Cernunnos’ eyes reflects only the blood-orange glow of an alien sunrise.
“Until we meet again, clever Tiefling.”
And then he’s falling again.