Unseelie Sorceress vs Kenzi -- Round 1

[Kenzi]

No nightmares had he had last night, no terrors to mar his dreams whilst Kenzi'd lain in his arms. But the Unseelie Witch had not been idle.

After her failed attempt to send her shadowy assassins (for that is what they were) after the couple, she had resorted to the dark thaumaturgies she knew best. Long-distance, sympathetic magic, for she had more than enough physical samples of Roderick (hair, etc) to work a spell upon him.

As night fell, the witch was hard at work over her cauldron. An image of the two young lovers in Roderick's main room showed in a crystal ball the Unseelie kept near to hand.

The spell the dark fae wrought would take time to germinate, but already she had brought her fell mixture to a boil, and was preparing to add those ingredients needed to make it work on the Scotsman. With a shrill cry, she cast a lock of his hair into the roiling cauldron's reek, and it flashed with a green fire before being consumed in the liquid's surface.

Right at that moment, Roderick's hand in Kenzi's gripped, enough pressure to cause discomfort if not pain, and his eyes shut tightly. He gasped out softly, free hand coming to his temple. The tender moment was shattered as his entire frame jolted once more, seized up stiffly, and he cried out in pain. The fire offered no protection here, though as her power manifested in the physical plane, a sharp eye might catch a reflection in Roderick's washstand mirror, placed near his bed on the far side of the cabin's main room. A dark-skinned, twisty-horned creature, feminine yet decidedly not human, might be seen in the reflection, almost as from a window looking in; the spell was growing stronger by the moment, its dark tendrils seeping into the Scot's spirit, visible to a sensitive eye.

Kenzi grimaced as he squeezed her hand quite tightly. Being of delicate bone structure, it did hurt, and she jerked to free her hand at nearly the same time that he stiffened and cried out. Kenzi immediately placed both of her hands upon his cheeks and drew her face closer to his, panic in her eyes. "Roderick? What's wrong?"

When he didn't immediately answer, she shifted one hand so that an index finger and thumb could pry open one of his eyelids to see if he was actually fully conscious. What Kenzi saw caused her to gasp loudly and jerk back for a moment. Gone was the vibrant blue that soothed her, replaced with solid black.

He was lurching under her, but he hadn't lost full control of himself just yet. For he was fighting it, oh how he fought it, with every shred of his will that he could muster. Being in full contact now with Kenzi was having a dampening effect which allowed that shred of Roderick to remain, at least for a time.

Black eyes reflected the darkness that was still seeping into his spirit though, the dark connection of magic that had been made when the Unseelie witch used a very piece of the Scot himself to form her sorcery. With her hand disentangled from that strong grip, his arm waved, as if to ward off some unseen foe, and his other hand was gripping the couch cuschions hard enough to rip the upholstery. Hurting Kenzi, even in this fit, was the last thing he wanted, even if the witch was trying to make him do just that. "Nae...nae...naaaaaeeee!!!" he cried out, feeling the black sorceress' will stab thorns into his very psyche.

With all this struggle, the capricious, rage-driven fae beyond the mirror - her mystical window into this time and place - screeched out again in her frustration, bending more of her will to the task. But it would be nearly impossible not to notice the sound, which reached across from the fae Otherworld to this with magic's wrought connection.

With his eyes open and Kenzi now able to fully see them, she noticed that the blackness was spreading even into the white sclera of the eye. Kenzi paused, everything suddenly moving in slow motion, as she felt the panic within her begin to swell to the brim of overflowing. She watched his arm wave in that defensive position then noted the other ripping the fabric of the couch, muscles straining and veins bulging with proof of his struggle. This was no seizure. As if she needed more proof, he began to scream and her heart leapt into her throat. He was fighting, struggling against something that she couldn't see but something within her could put the pieces of the puzzle together and see what she could not.

The shrieking of the Unseelie sorceress was unmistakable and within a millisecond of hearing that sound, Kenzi's head snapped back with her eyes widening. The turbulent ocean blue faded into a pure milky white that peered in the direction of the sound, seeing not the room as it was but beyond the trappings that held no life force, seeking out the putrid green glow that would indicate the touch of Unseelie magic on the other side of the veil.

Seeing what she needed to see, Kenzi (not Kenzi) drew in a deep, gasping breath and pressed more firmly with the hand that remained upon Roderick's cheek while the other lifted, fingers appearing nearly as claws in their rigidity, and pointed first at the fire and then with a rapid whoosh of her arm through the air towards that sickly glow that transcended this plane. With a gutteral chant of the same five syllables the swirling black "vine" as it appeared, ethereal but twisted and violent, poured from Roderick's mouth and with a gale force, entered Kenzi causing her back to arch and a malevolent scream to leave her lips. The vine of black magic coursed through her body and departed rapidly from those rigid fingertips, swirling and flying wildly into the fire only to immediately depart in a flood of gold and purple light that collided with the mirror, and beyond, hopefully tearing through the veil and into the Otherworld as Kenzi shouted in Gaelic, "Chaith mé tú amach agus ceangal tú ó áit seo!" (I cast you out and bind you away from this place!) Without knowing the result of her battle with the Unseelie sorceress, on both sides of the veil for her spirit surely transcended into that Otherworld to tap into her dormant power, Kenzi collapsed though managed to do so partially upon Roderick as if she would continue to protect him even unconscious.

Roderick saw all of this, though it was like looking through a veil of black lace or gauze, shapes moving but little distinct. The play of Unseelie versus Seelie forces was quite the light show, however. As Kenzi struggled with the will of the sorceress, that dark fae was forced suddenly to direct her attention to defense, having realized her error in revealing herself. She tried, how she tried to fend off the magics Kenzi Douglas (for surely, she was manifesting old, past-life powers in this 'new' form) sent at her and the mirror-window. It was all she could do not to be seared irrevocably by the gold and purple streams of energy, and as the mirror itself melted into a pile of slag and pooled, hot glass, the echoing scream of the Unseelie witch could be heard hanging in the air for a few heartbeats.

Then silence, the silence at least of the crackling fire, pierced by the firce, deep breaths the Scot was taking. His senses were coming back to him in a dizzying array behind his firmly shut eyelids, though he'd not left off his strong clutch of the unconscious Kenzi, cradled in thickly-muslced, fear-tensed arms. "Oh, lass, I'm sae sorry. Kenzi lass," he murmured agsinst her ear - whether or not she could hear it - and stroked a hand through her hair. He managed to force himself more upright, rocking her gently. He wasn't positive what had happened, but the screech of the Unseelie had triggered subtle, almost visceral, animal memoires in him of chase and torture in dark, magical, faery not-realms. Shades of his dreams.

The geas, perhaps, that Kenzi laid in her ancient tongue had a further effect. More even than the crucifix and rosary beads Roderick kept on a bookshelf in his cabin were enough to provide his home protection from the Unseelie witch - surely not his somewhat shaken faith - the fae-Scotswoman's power had cast an enduring dweomer. And, perhaps, Kenzi might somehow use her knowledge of the dark fae's face to her advantage. At least now she'd have an inkling of what might be going on, that these visions of darkness were not simply figments of imagination.