Rebirth and Second Chances

Chapter 301: Book 1 Prologue

I stalked around my realm for the tenth time. I noticed the little details that had made this place more a home than a fortress. I was proud of how Cait Sith had developed. Unlike my father, who had borrowed heavily from the architectural styling of Sidhe Keep and Castle, I had guided the Cait Sith to lean heavily toward nature.

Instead of mortar and walls, there were trees, fields, and streams redolent with small animals. Birds, mice, rats, rabbits, and squirrels proliferated. An abundant microcosm, creating an ecosystem that was influenced solely to meet the needs of my people in cat form.

The animals were mostly illusions, for now. But as more Cait Sith were discovered, as more cats were able to portal and take up residence within this realm, Cait Sith would absorb the excess energy each cat spent daily and use that excess energy to give life and substance to the illusions.

I wandered around in my cat form, exclusively now. My pregnancy had advanced to the last stage. That stage of my pregnancy where my center of gravity seemed to change daily. It was simply untenable for me to lose my balance so easily or find myself splayed ignobly on the ground after sitting, unable to stand again.

Living in my cat form allowed me to ignore the realities of pregnancy that Seelie women had to endure.

As I continued to roam, I tried to understand my actions. I wasn't sure why I was so restless. Or what exactly it was I was looking for. Not until I felt the first contraction. The kittens were ready to be born, and I had unconsciously been relying on instinct and my natural desire to find a safe place to give birth as I scouted the territory. My body had known what was coming before my mind could register the inevitable.

Here in Cait Sith, there was no need to find a safe place to give birth or to protect my kits. The entire realm was a construct of my desire. Every tree, blade of grass, and drop of water was created to nurture an environment that would keep me and my people safe.

Since one place was as good as any other, I decided to settle in a spot near a stream. It would give me ready access to drinking water when I was resting between births. I wasn't certain if that was necessary. My mother had kept me far away whenever one of my father's subjects gave birth, but it couldn't hurt.

The exact mechanics of what was going to happen were unclear. I knew vaguely that this would come out of there and that I would need to eat that and lick there as the process proceeded. But things like drinking water during the event, if I would be able to move from one spot to another, or even what I should look for to make sure a kit was healthy and doing well was beyond me.

As the contractions increased in occurrence and intensity, I really wished I wasn't alone. I wished so hard that the bond between Teigh, Ag, and Meala responded and the three found themselves inside Cait Sith for the first time.

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"Tia?" Teigh said, recognizing immediately where he was and how he had gotten here even if this version of Cait Sith was so different from her father's.

"Meow," I replied, unable to change form at this point to speak with Teigh.

My panting had become labored, as the contractions had gained in strength. The labor seemed to be both progressing quickly and taking forever. I remembered finding the spot by the stream, barely seconds ago. But it felt like days had expired as one contraction followed another.

"Meala, lay down next to her and help keep her warm. Ag, as the kits are born, start licking her so that the healing augment from your saliva restores some vitality and health to her between each birth," I heard Teigh say as I felt a stabbing pain of such intensity that I yowled.

The pain was so concentrated and protracted that I knew the first kitten was about to be birth.

I felt Teigh activate [Beleros Aura], the healing nature of the fire soothing and somehow shifting a part of my body that had been obstructing the kit's birth. As the opening was expanded, the first kit, a girl, slipped free.

Ag responded before I had a chance, eating the placenta that soon followed, cleaning the kit of fluids, sniffing to make sure the kit was responding as it should, then nudging her towards one of my teats to feed.

Once the kit was taken care of, Ag began cleaning me. The healing properties of his tongue bathed me, a balm of cool energy that soothed the feeling of skin roughened by sandpaper.

Seelie or Unseelie had played the role of father for all but one. That first kit, my first daughter, was obviously a full-blooded Cait Sith. For now, she would be heir to my title and Cait Sith.

That might change in the future. That depended on her and her siblings. The Cait Sith would demand a strong ruler, one capable of fighting the influences of [Paradox]. If she wasn't strong enough to stymie the incursions of [Paradox], then another would take her place.

For now, I would name the Poe, Tay, Tow. Their names had a nice snap to them.

****

Zeus was furious.

Poseidon was just as angry. The loss of the Kraken, his first son, in this damnable war of extinction that Zeus and Odin had instigated had him as angry as the Olympian as he was at the Sea Hag.

"How can Ares, the God of War, be defeated by a dying people?" Zeus sneered as he demanded an explanation from Ares over the events that had just taken place.

"You know as well as I do that [War] is impartial. It has no side," Ares rebutted. "If the armies of Man you set in motion failed, then they have fulfilled their role as conscripts of [War]."

"There will always be a side that losses, father," Athena interjected. "Why has this battle so unsettled you?"

"Because the Sidhe were all but destroyed," Zeus roared the sounds of thunder and the flashes of lightning punctuating his anger. "But something has happened. Something has altered their fate.

"I know the rest of you have felt it. Something is different even if I don't know what it is."

"You really don't know, father?" Athena asked. "The changes are easy to recognize. [Fate] and [Prophecy] have coalesced into a moment of change not long ago. [Fairy] has been restored. The Sidhe have regained their magic. And the Wild Magic has moved to intervene, sealing the ley-lines and nodes of this world from interference.

"Just as momentous as those changes have been. The Tuatha de Danann have taken notice, someone has invoked their protection to confound the eyes of even my trusted Owl from spying.

"And something else to consider. The Summerlands that had been closed, the divide between this realm and that blocked, had been opened. The dead have noticed, and those trapped in Limbo, Tartarus, or Hel have been freed to claim the afterlife the Summerlands have promised.

"Hades and Hel will have been severely damaged, their power weakened as people they had claimed as theirs were ripped from within their realms and allowed to escape and claim their rightful place."

"What do you mean [Fate] and [Prophecy] have been satisfied? The Sidhe still exists! [Prophecy] foretold that they would fall," Apollo pointed out in anger.

"No, it didn't," Athena assured him. "[Prophecy] proclaimed that the Sidhe would wither, that the death of [Fairy] would be the beginning of the death of [Sidhe]. And that happened.

"But [Prophecy] never said that the Sidhe would be wiped out, or that [Fairy] would not be restored. We just assumed that with [Fairy] gone, it could never return."

***

"Caw," Huginn screeched.

He had just returned from watching the Viking fleet and army sent to aid Rome destroyed by the Sidhe. Odin looked up from a scroll that he was reading, extending his arm for the crow to rest on, and focused his remaining eye on seeing what it was the crow had seen.

He watched it all.

The illusion that set the armies at each other's throats.

The raging fires that burned hotter than even Greek fire.

The faux dragon that had strafed the flotilla of ships, destroying almost everything in its path.

The harpies killed.

The Kraken butchered.

Zeus and Poseidon's impotency as the events that transpired reduced every scheme they had concocted into ash.

But he saw what Zeus and Poseidon had missed. He saw that the entire battle, the tactics, and attacks that had changed everything had been instigated by one person. A Sidhe cloaked by the Divine, obscured by the Tuatha de Danann.

Whoever it was that had changed the course of fate was hidden. A blank spot in the weave of providence. A figure protected by Divine powers that had never been seen on this planet before.

And as he pondered that bit of information, the wisdom that he had traded one of his eyes for prodded him. It suggested that these events were likely to widen. That the plans within plans that he had juggled were about to come crashing down.

And the wisdom that they vaunted him for suggested that maybe it was time to retreat. To burn his bridges with Zeus and instead focus on shoring up the structures for his own Pantheon. He realized for the first time that he needed to make sure his own house was secure before he could worry about extending his influence.