Rites of Passage

[conjuredskies]

The last grey light outside has been smothered by the roiling storm. Frost coats the shop walls, and the floor where Felix kneels with chalk in hand. He’s done this once before. He knows the runes. The warding pattern. The exact layout of the circle he inscribes, scratched out carefully with cold-numbed hands. He should use a different building, really. He doesn’t know what effects may linger in this place when the little shopkeeper returns. He should rest and wash, to prepare himself. But there’s no time for such caution now.

Besides. Some gods favour the hasty and the furtive.

Felix gets to his feet at last, feverishly rubbing warmth into his hands as he looks over his work. He has to be sure everything is perfect as it can be, given the circumstances. Finally he lifts his reddened hands and pulls up the soft silver hood over his head. Slow, deep breaths for a few minutes. Then he snuffs the candles around the circle one by one in little puffs of ice until just one remains, its light glittering off the circle laid out like a spiderweb on the floor before him. There’s no need for a portal this time. Somewhere in the Wilds the gate stands open where he and Naugus left it. Unless Reynard has iced that shut as well- and somehow Felix doubts he could.

He’s about to find out.

He draws the unseen threads of his wards about himself, braces his mortal self before he reaches out and calls the words of invocation. The names. This is a ritual of invitation, a very specific form of supplication. As it did once before, something answers. It’s easier this second time. Far easier, terrifyingly easy, and if he were a wiser or a less desperate man he might stop and reconsider what he’s doing. But Felix Caelus came here with a need to save himself and his beloved, and he’ll risk whatever he has to.

He can feel the presence rise like the swell of a wave beneath him, a power that’s been here the whole time, too vast and subtle to notice until it stirs. It comes on swiftly, unstoppable, huge, and he rocks back a step as it seems to fill the room to bursting. The shadows flood in from the corners of the room, flowing like water, pooling in the center of the circle- and then they erupt upward in a storm of black wings. Felix ducks his head as the dark birds clamor over him and disappear into the shadows once more.

When he lifts his eyes she’s looking down at him.

The form she wears is eight or nine feet tall: it hurts, he’s learned, to try and look too closely. In the strange unlight she casts, her skin is pale as moonlight, her robe the soft silver of dusk. She studies him with eyes dark and unreadable as those of the ravens perched on her shoulder and wrist. Her bare feet do not touch the stone beneath them; it seems inconceivable that they should, as if her touch would break this fragile world around her.

Felix bows, deep and genuinely reverent. “Lady Nocturnal.”

“Scribbling runes on a shop floor, this time? You seem in a hurry, little mage.” Her words are arch, her voice low and unearthly. “Why have you summoned me?”

So little posturing, so quickly to business. Felix chooses his words slowly. “I seek to strike a bargain, my lady.”

Nocturnal’s expressions never betray much. But she lifts her chin a little, and she seems obscurely pleased. A tiny sliver of satisfaction, perhaps. “Go on.”

“I ask safe passage through your realm,” he says, and though Nocturnal doesn’t ask for prayers he’s praying with all his heart in this moment. “For myself and my betrothed, from the Nexus to his ship.”

“Fleeing Winter's grasp. I see. A little late in making your escape, aren’t you? But very well. What do you offer in return?”

This is the part he’s avoided dwelling on. The part that dissuaded him from asking before now. Not my soul. Not his. “What would you ask of me?”

Nocturnal’s head tilts down at him, her eyebrows lifting. “You possess something of significant value to me, mortal. Something I will have in return.”

The hood. He reaches up to touch it-

“No.” The faintest hint of amusement in her low voice. “I have no wish to take back my boon to you. No, Felix Caelus. The key.”

He swallows. In making the gate to Nocturnal’s realm Ixis Naugus forged a keystone and gave it to him. It’s the focus on which the gate was built, the sole key with the power to unlock – or to seal away - the realm of shadows beyond. No wonder that the Prince wants it. No wonder that she’d ask for it now.

“That’s a steep price for one trip, my lady-“ he tries to demur.

“Oh? And your lives are worth so little to you? Do you value your betrothed so cheap?” Her lofty tone cools as she stares down at him. “Or do you think a few starving wolves and lost meals are the worst this Winter holds for you? That nothing more vicious lies waiting in the storm? It hungers, little mage, and it has not had its fill of blood. Perhaps you’d rather stay and sate it?”

“No- no, my lady.” Fear lances through him, visions of elemental wrath let loose on what remains of the Nexus denizens. A sharp, cold understanding of where Jim would choose to stand. Felix swallows, tries to breathe steadily before he speaks again. They have to get out. They have to. “I merely ask a fair price in exchange for such a powerful key. Grant my betrothed and I passage through your realm whenever I ask, and guidance to our destination.”

He can’t tell whether the look she gives him is stern or intrigued, nor does her tone betray it. “Grown jealous of the Mobian sorcerer, have we?”

“I… gained an appreciation for the powers of your realm, let’s say.” He can feel himself standing on the knife edge, hopeful and afraid. “Grant me this, and the key is yours.”

There’s a moment of silence, velvet-heavy as the darkness around them, and then the Prince said, “So be it. You may have the privilege of traversing my realm, with guidance from my servants… for as long as you prove a respectful guest.”

It’s only now that Felix realizes how hard he’s trembling. “I understand, my lady.”

“Then we have a contract,” says the Prince of Night and Darkness.