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“Yes, Sage loves to read. We know.” Bryn was not letting Danu go down a rabbit hole. “Now, we know that the king is wanting to bring his father back through the sacrifices at the gate, which still rattles my brain. How do we prepare?” Bryn was reaching out for her patience and finding no purchase.
“Balor was taken down by you when you, the Morrigan, were closing the veil. He is on the other side now doing who knows what in a prison of the Tuatha Dé Danann’s making. Now, his son as the king has spent so much time looking for you all, knowing that he has to defeat you again and to make sure the veil closes with Balor on this side and the Tuatha Dé Danann on the other. Permanently.” Danu’s jaw clenched before she spoke again.
“Killing you in the past did not bring his father back, so I am guessing he has finally worked out that he can only bring him back fully by killing you all after you’ve been bound to your powers once again. Should that happened, what is left of this world... Well, there wouldn’t be anything left. They are demons of chaos magic, creating horrible natural events. It would quite literally be hell on earth.”
“So, the sacrifices at the gate we are dealing with right now? You said something about the deaths being because our powers were a beacon, and if what Arawn said—” Bryn didn’t finish before Danu spoke.
“Those sacrifices are to feed his power enough to tether his father to this world through the veil until the time is right. When the veil is wide enough, Balor can step back through onto mortal ground.”
“The small deaths keep the veil open just enough, and yes, yours would rip it wide open until you got to the other side to close it again. That’s when he can trap you,” Callum responded, having been quietly listening at the window the whole time.
“We were so much stronger than we are now,” Jace said more to himself than anyone in the room. “Seems almost as if we are walking into a suicide mission if we go against him. We lost when we were stronger... No.” Jace shook his head, Bryn unsure what he was saying no to, but she had a clue.
Mr. Rafferty was right. She was behind the others in grasping her memories.
“It would have been so much worse had you and the rest of the Tuatha Dé Danann not stepped in. If sacrifices hadn’t been made.” Danu looked sadly at Bryn as she said this.
Bryn gave her a look of confusion in return.
“Are you speaking of us losing our power?” Bryn asked, and Danu waved Callum over.
Callum with his cumulative knowledge of all their history. A walking encyclopedia of who Bryn was long ago.
“When the veil was threatened, the Tuatha Dé Danann fought and took their last stand against the Fomori, not the first of their battles. Yet, this time, they were about to breach the levels of the veil with their wraiths, the very ones the king uses even now.”
Settling onto the edge of the couch near Danu, he folded his hands on his lap, his eyes focused on somewhere far away from where they were as he continued as if reading it all from a book in his mind.
“The Morrigan and her Clan of Shadows held the line until the rest of the tribe could make it to where the veil meets our world. She”—he finally looked at Bryn— “you knew the veil needed to be sealed to keep the Fomori from taking over the Otherworld, or as it was called at the time, Faerie. So, with Danu’s assistance, you all gave over your powers to the soul stones and went across the veil so that you would all be reincarnated and born mortal. If you crossed with your powers then, you would have been stuck there, and the earth would not have its warriors.”
Breathe, Bryn.She was unsure if she had any more space in her brain for new information.
“As the last to go through, you refused to leave your clan vulnerable against the soldiers of Balor. So you split their souls, making them immortal as one part of them lives on each side of the veil and therefore cannot be killed.”
Callum nodded as he finished and stood back up to return to the window.
“Clan of Shadows?” Jace asked before Bryn could.
“They were your mortal warriors who fought under your banner as the Morrigan. Fought beside you in every war you took the lead in and helped you to keep the balance in the wars between the mortals,” Callum responded.
Jace looked at her wide-eyed.
“You had an army, Bryn.”
Yes, one split in two so that she would have to figure out how to unite the two sides of themselves should she need to call upon them to fight Balor.
Another priority to add to the ever-growing list.
“The moment those stones released your power back to you, a beacon would have gone out. Not just for Bres, but for others who remember, which is why the man you were handling the rites for called out to you for the deaths of Bres and his people,” Danu finished for Callum.
The man had been one with the knowledge of who she was, knew what to expect when she came back. His people must still speak of the Morrigan long after she left the earth.
It was not only the king who would search for her and the others to destroy them.
How would she know friend from foe?
What she did know was the wraiths were coming for the first time to a city who had no idea, and to warn them would only condemn herself.
Never had Ifreann been at the mercy of the wraiths, being that King Bres most likely thought his devout followers would never allow his enemy in the gate. Now that he knew they had, they were doomed to a visit from his assassins.
