This part turned out very different in tone than my original sketch for it. And much more elaborate. Perhaps it is because of how long it's been, perhaps it is due to the situation the characters find themselves in. Mab is slightly out of character, but that is kind of the idea. I do hope you will like it. Tell me where it works and where it doesn't.

I have been asked where Syrinx' name comes from, I will clarify this in today's chapter. :)

It took me quite some time to come up with a made up fantasy name that I liked. I heard the word syringe on the tele and thought it was pretty. It sounded familiar. The word I was actually looking for when coming up with the name was Sering, also known as the lilac tree, which can be purple. It looks a lot like a butterfly bush. I have purple and white ones in my garden. In Victorian times these flowers represented first love.

This choice in name shows that her father, as Syrinx, is a dreamer. He used to love fairytales and legends as much as she does. We will go back to this idea in a bit.

Then I looked the word Syrinx up:

1. a tube or pipe,

2. a tube-shaped cavity in the brain or spinal cord,

3. the vocal organ of a bird,

4. a primitive wind instrument consisting of several parallel pipes bound together.

I am totally going with the wind instrument. It's poetic, the image has something pagan to it, it suits Mab's element.

It also fits Syrinx' role in the story being Mab's instrument. The wind instrument in question is in fact the pan flute.

Let's pretend for a moment I didn't make the name up for the pretty sound of it.

There is a Syrinx in classical mythology. She is the origin of the instrument's name.

Syrinx was a tree nymph, a friend of Artemis. The god Pan saw her, he pursued her. She fled, prayed for a way out and turned into the reed. Pan cut it, strapped the stems and made this=Syrinx into his signature instrument.

Supposedly my Syrinx' father heard this tale once, the Roman culture being present in his country at the time. The name stayed with him. He named his daughter Syrinx.

I won't give anything away on the Lady of the Lake now. You will hear plenty about her and her motivation later on.

I was also asked about Frik and I completely agree. Mab should have kicked him out of the Land of Magic long time ago. I will post here why she hasn't:

In the previous scene Mab kept Frik on a long leash due to a certain laziness on her part. She is used to having him around, has been for centuries. This blinds her. She is more desperate in holding onto little specks of what glory and magic she used to have than she believes herself to be. She trusts that she and Syrinx will not be influenced by his constant criticisms. The newly arrived father is just not important enough to take into account there. He can talk with Frik all he likes, for his opinion does not matter.

Queen Mab knows Frik is a traitor. Her plan is to keep him occupied until the end of time with copying the stories about her. Hubris on her part. She can't keep an eye on him all the time, especially not while she is still weak. She reasons it would be more harmful to set him free. After all, as far as she knows, leaving him behind without powers the previous time led to him informing Merlin of the way to defeat her. She will not make that mistake again.

I get bonus points for mentioning squirrels. ;)

Let's get started on the chapter now.

The Father and the Fairy

He saw the creature from the back standing very straight in the soft glow of its cavern. For a moment his mind went to hidden stolen treasure, dragons. She was small for a dragon, this being of shadow. She must hold it all here, every treasure legend had ever spoken of. The cloak of raven hair swayed softly. She was a woman. She was undeniably female yet calling her a woman was not fitting. A fairy. Even less so. Fairies, he knew them to be humansized, regal and to be feared from his childhood tales, but they were light in spirit and soft in appearance. Wings would not suit her. Yet it did her credit that she was such a marvel to behold without something as ostentatious as wings. The word witch would do. It covered her darkness, her magic, but no, not her grandeur or her beauty.

It was too commonplace. A less familiar word was in order. He heard the room breathe, not her. The room he realized was an extension of her being. Her being being magic itself? This room was the heart of her magic within this stronghold of a land that she had created for herself and her kind. Or had magic there first and created her? He was distracted from his thoughts. Her very essence coiled around her in this enclosed shell. He could imagine her in more glorious days basking on these radiant crystals as humans in the sun. She wallowed in her magic. Stashing it up like a squirrel. As Frik used to call her that to her face. Sometimes he now cowardly called her a rodent.

She looked comfortable when she closed herself off like this. It was the most open pose he had ever seen her in, yet somehow wild and composed too.

Her privacy was disturbed by his figure, peering into the room. He did not have to see her shoulders tense, to know he was intruding. They did not, the goddess was always tense. She had known him to be there the very moment he entered the corridor-tunnel leading here. By the time he caught sight of her her patience had run out and she was sick of his-nearly-presence. The nerve of her human guest. She would not speak of it. As disrespectful as "grandfather gnome", sneaking behind her every step as if she would not notice.

Indeed much like Frik he had taken up household chores to keep himself busy. She had watched him take the library for his territory, as his daughter had. He had been categorizing the books and scrolls mere moments ago.

With his daughter gone Ealdor had recognized the freedom he held at present to wander around without fear of consequence. He had not taken a direct route from the library to the crystal room. Rather a tunnel one, picking up discarded crystals as he went. He had noted that Mab left those lying around in every room and passageway. In many places they grew out of the rockside walls.

In the days past he had not acknowledged the few fairies fluttering around him, or not yet. He did not attach much credibility to fairies. He had none around him just now. They had been oddly quiet since Syrinx left and he just as oddly did not notice their absence. Queen Mab noticed. She felt their absence as a void in herself.

It was nice to see someone make himself useful here, she had credited him aloud. He thought it peculiar then that she would stroll about her library the moment the battle for her existence was being fought, when she must have magical means to watch every development. His daughter had told him she would not be likely to leave her crystal room for as long as her life was at stake. She could stay there for days. He had seen men crumble under less pressure than she was under this moment.

Not much later she had retreated to the safety of her crystal room and hid herself there from the fight, like a frightened animal.

In comparison to Frik's recent, several centuries, of complaints and blatant disregard to her rules, the presence of a human Christian in her withering core of her power should not make much of a difference in damage. Saving him had been a gift to the girl. She could not afford many gifts. She had already given her ward so much, she had to be careful. Syrinx' most recent request for a sword had only taken a small effort from the goddess. She was used to forging weaponry from and with magic. She had decided long time ago that battle was to be her second nature. A vital venture that was lately not proving to be very successful. She would not step away from it. Surely practical gifts were preferable to giving what tenderness she had given to humans before and lost in return.

"She loves you." He did not attempt to sound casual about it. Any attempt to a casual conversation should go wrong with this creature. Magical beings were many things but not, that he had heard of, enthusiasts of small talk. He suspected suggesting they should participate in such trivial matters would insult them. A direct approach, keeping his speech simple. She would prefer that, as in his experience true monarchs usually do. This was not a delicate situation, unless they made it so. Since neither of them were delicate persons he doubted they would.

If ever he had known this world of literal make- believe to be real, he would have remembered more than the dashing chivalry and clashing of weapons from the stories he had admired so long ago. A love he had shared with his wife Isolt, named for Isolt the fair of course.

Syrinx' very name had been a romantic fancy between the two of them. He still cared for the whimsical illuminations and those creatures that speak to the imagination. The heroes… he had always preferred Arthurian tales to fairy drivel. It featured more noble, refined, gentler magic. It is what he had tried to raise Syrinx on, overly successful. The chivalry, the basic ethics, loyalty above all and then the ultimate poetic mistress to serve turned out to be this uncouth shadowy enchantress.

The queen would have known of his youthful heart, having felt his fantasies and having lived off them.

"She loves me in many ways." Her voice did not sound odd in this place. It was in harmony with the soft buzz of the crystals. A tune like someone humming at a funeral, not at all like bees. He wondered if the goddess ever went outside to take some air, to talk, to meet someone, to love, to see real bees, real squirrels, real everything-that-did-not-seem-possible-in-this-world. "The innocent adoration of a child…" Her ringed finger trailed over the line-up of crystals beside her. She carefully and almost indifferently selected her next victim. "The love for a goddess, a beauty ideal. Yes, dear Ealdor, I have seen all kinds of love in her eyes. Ones she is not consciously aware of."

"Is the scrawny fellow around?"

"Why?" It was not a question. It was an order not to dispute her will and therefore not to question Frik's possible presence. He, as everyone, was to live by her rules.

She had given up on pretense this day. She regarded everyone and everything in her realm with the same cold indifference. She didn't see why he then, the outsider, should care about eavesdroppers.

"Because this will not be a pleasant conversation. You may not want any witnesses. I want to know what you have planned for my daughter." He did not sound demanding, hostility would only make the gap wider between them.

He could feel her smile.

"She will be my voice, body and will in your world…"

His directness agreed with her. He did not care how he spoke to her. This was a consequence of standing before someone who was not real. They were never, not ever, going to be on the same side. It did not matter what was said. It would not change either of their minds. It made talking more difficult, since every word was futile and doomed they had to be forced from the mouth and were to reach stone ears. It also reduced what they both said to its essence. His words were made more straightforward and undoubtedly more dangerous to his person. When things came down to it, and they very much did, only she held power here in their dispute. Perhaps that was the true reason for his laxness now. Here he was a dead man. What he had left to lose had rode off on a magical horse always from this hellish place.

He waited for this cruel mistress to continue, politely. However he would not wait for words that would not come. Her extensive silence was an ample answer. Rulers were like that, this dark matriarch included. No explanation needed when they deemed it so. For the first time he dared suspect he would gain some insight into her after all.

"How old are you?"

He did wait for a reply now. Another reply from her would be an implied invitation to converse more. Would she risk it?

"Older than you can imagine."

She sensed him cross the threshold to her innersanctum. She heard him approach her person in that raucously loud way humans do when they think they are quiet and discreet. They cannot help it.

"I have lost sight of what I can imagine."

He turned around her, drew half a circle, craned his neck to connect with her face, her back had not shown much expression and he wanted to give her a chance that he would not normally give one with as cold a voice as hers. He watched her without blinking as if he was observing a wild animal. And that was what he was doing. An animal with the power, passion and carelessness of a natural disaster locked inside of her, to be opened at her will. Pandora's box, to give it a Christian name. He did not know the box had been emptied, the disasters had been let loose on the world and yet left it unchanged. Her magic force had died, even her hope was dwindling rapidly. He looked on the ferocious glow left of what she had been. She cast her glittering eyes up to meet him.

"You are beautiful, do not hurt her."

It was such a human thing to say. Yet his plea surprised him.

Her expression did not shift to any emotion. The beast turned out to be just a statue. He did not feel the relief that should follow that revelation. Every being she knew, herself included, would plead for Syrinx' wellbeing. No one was concerned about Queen Mab's fate and the Old Ways, only about what havoc she would wreak on her handmaiden. Admittedly if such a tiny spirit could weigh out the vastness of a religion so easily in these people's twisted perspectives, perhaps the girl should have been the goddess. And not Mab. Someone fresh and innocent, likeable. She would have been more successful at it. It, surviving, living. Being adored. But they needn't worry their mortal minds. Mab could not hurt her anymore. I am dying.

She forbade the words from rising to her lips, raising into the air and her face did not betray a thought. The crystal in her hand, it should have been a strong one, it was useless. She could peer into them, infinitely, and see nothing more than its glasslike texture. She could look into every single one and she would because her own stubbornness forced her to do just that. She would never give up. What would she do when she had seen them all, when the room was truly proven dead? This seemed to be the problem of someone else. A completely different time and place, far away, for as long as she could find another crystal however tiny that might hold magic. Without crystals, she would not be herself. A forgotten goddess in crumbles and dust. Her realm would be no more. What will become of the girl she asked herself. Herself shrugged. Uninterested.

"I have ruined your daughter. You are right about that. I have spoiled her for the human world. She could never live without magic now."

"She cares more about you than she does about me."

"Don't blame her, Ealdor," A mockery, this calling of his name. "she never had a mother. "

It took a while, a grinding hard moment of silence for the Duke to see that her goddessness was waiting for him to answer. Patiently as well for her conduct. Her statement had been a question.

She watched herself. The crystal she kept in her hand, it looked desolate there. It did not fit, nor did she, anymore. Not in this room, this world or any other, except back into the misty realms preserved for those who are too weary. Those who are ghosts. Her realm could become such a realm, if she had the strength to keep it.

The crystal reflected the hollow shape of her. She was being drained, not the crystal, by the effort of looking into Camelot. The crystal tragically had no energy to give, but neither did she. It did not show her anything. Her guest of course assumed it did show something to her. Just as he assumed she would tell if his daughter was in danger. He wanted answers, he wanted to know how the battle was fought. That made two of them. Perhaps she kept holding the crystal, she rationalized, because she wanted to give the impression that her magic did work. Or she had simply forgotten to discard it. Her detached look, her detached everything, she would not at all make for a capable mother. Yet it was unmistakable that his daughter was born perfect for her. She had grown into the girl who needed exactly this unlikely person to take her by the hand and guide her in life.

"That is true, she grew up without a mother. Her mother was lost to us when Syrinx was... too young to remember. She never needed a motherly figure in her life after that. She chased away any nurses I enlisted with her whimsical silences. She meant no harm. She just did not bond with them, showed no interest in them. She won't remember the nurses. I left her in the care of the priest and guards while I was away, people who can be silent, trustworthy, caring, better guardians in those ways, but not in the tender and soft ways of a mother. It appeared to be what she wanted. Her childhood must have been very lonely. She must have… when she found that book, that image of you, she must have made up a mother." Her mocking gaze meant to tell him he was wrong. They were people of different opinions, it did not touch him. " She looks up to you. She is projecting on you…"

"She is not."

"She looks to you as… she looks at you as a mother. She trusts you to take care of her. If she could but read what was in those pages, the bloodshed and horror you evoked and the heroes you sacrificed."

"She can read. I taught her."

"Yes, I heard her read at court and the priest must have taught her some letters once. That is not what I meant, I mean that you have blinded her. She reads the book and does not see the horrors in it. She cannot sanction such things, just for your sake. That is not what my daughter is like.

If I have any say in it…"

"You don't.

It is perfectly possible your daughter lost a mother and did not need another after that. You have known her for so long. You should understand her but I see you are a stranger to her. And as you see, I am no mother figure. You would not wish to me to be anyone's mother. Your daughter does not look upon me as her mother. I would know if she did, you wouldn't. Mortals, you are always left guessing what people think of you like little blind mice you scatter around, squeaking and fearing each other. I sense how every single person perceives me. I feel such things. It makes me a goddess. I would not be here if she thought me anyone else than who I am. She knows me perfectly well. Her faith in me returned me to this world. Not hers alone. It was as you say the final drop, you do say that? It was her who made the difference because she sees me for who I truly am. I appeared to her before all others. She does not desire a mother in her life. I am certain she would have told you if she did. Although," Venom glanced in her dark eyes. "she could do with more of a father. You have kept her lonely. When she could not get your company she put her Everything in me. It is what you do, humans seek refuge in faith. What is to say she would not have done the same with you around. It wasn't God she picked and it wasn't you." There had been no inflection to her voice, no power to speak of nor a sign of the hubrical pride that so clearly lay at the base of what she said.

It was pure, stonehard reasoning. The surprise lay in the fact that after her intendedly hurtful speech he was still there.

There were words for what she had said. Grave personal insults, heresy, blasphemy. There were punishment for what she said as well. Here, in this inbetween world, such things lost meaning. She was more than her words, less than them, different altogether. Religion for once had nothing to do with it. It was a dispute over parenting, nothing more. She had said what she thought, what she knew to be possibly false about him in a final moment to share her opinion and be frank about something, that wasn't magic, that she actually cared for. How ironical and unfortunate for her, Frik might say, that she wanted him to have taken better care of Syrinx when she had and was about to fail worse than him. Her queen was going to leave her. While Syrinx should become one of the gods. The world has never been just. It rarely makes the right things possible.

She softly let go of the crystal. Apathetically she had lowered her hand and her gaze with it to his face, a few inches higher than her own. Still the movement looked like lowering. Unless she herself drew attention to it, as she did now, few ever noticed when confronted with Mab that to human standards she was relatively small. It was deceptive to judge her or any being on size.

"You did not come here for me to promise that I will be the mother she never had. You want her to be free of me. You want me to promise you that. You also think of your men, those you care about at court, trapped in my war. You have every right to be concerned. Many will die because of me. And your daughter," She paused. "you imagine me pleased with myself for what I did to her. I pushed her into Camelot with a cry of victory. She served a purpose. I was fortunate with my servant's lineage and decided to make use of it. That is also why I keep you here. You are an influential pawn to have." A moment passed, she decided to grace him with some insight into his daughter's psyche.

"You have observed that only a masochist like Frik would enjoy being in my service."

"Dear Lord, no."

"Hush." Mab was not distracted nor hurt by the word he had uttered. "Syrinx isn't that, but I made use of her. A petty toy in fae hands. I toyed with her." A tremble in her eyes, her voice, too much repetition in her speech, her own words were too human for her to bear.

"Before I met her, under any circumstances marriage would have broken her. I respected her feelings when I could. I did nothing to harm or discourage her own wishes. She wasn't fit for your world anyway. I have taken good care of her."

"I couldn't have sent her to a convent."

"No." Considering the Duke's long lost plans for his daughter she began to worry about her own plan of marrying the girl off which would have gone just as dreadfully wrong.

A sly smile crept upon her face as if she has scored a victory. "You were married off at an early age?"

"Yes." She had heard it in the lofty words for his dead wife that he had kept from her, the self-restraint had been apparent, but his love had resounded through the mere statement of her having existed. His love for her and their daughter had been obvious in his own dedication to having his daughter wedded with a dear friend of his. Only the best would do.

She congratulated herself on understanding a smidge of human behaviour.

"That is what we do, we marry the pretty noblesse off, and the not so pretty too. The boys and girls, regardless of who they are and want to be. It baffles me that your girl should prove so troublesome at this. Kind and obedient as she is."

"Yes." He sounded rueful.

"Your marriage, that was a happy one no doubt."

"Yes." Keeping his emotions in check now.

"It's what humans do, they love when they have to. They adapt, I don't, not willingly. Just like her, she won't adapt either. She wouldn't before and she certainly won't now. I have ruined her," she said again with a snarky smile. "for what either of us would have her be. I make humans hunger for what they can't have. Syrinx for the wonders of magic. I made others hunger for her, love her, sweetly-not too deeply or they would frighten her off. They succeeded in doing that anyway." "The princes?" "And your friend. I wasn't taking chances. They were so eager to love, as humans are. It consumes them." Her cold eyes filled up with more darkness. "I had almost forgotten how they can do that." She had said "them" and they", not you. In her mind, she was talking not to Ealdor, a human. She was either talking to Frik, or to Ealdor-possibly-Frik's-runner-up.

"Why do they do that to themselves? Something so self-destructive." Her voice was a teasing hiss at this point. "It is something I admire in them and have always enjoyed witnessing."

"You despise us."

"No, I don't despise you. You are what you are. You too easily despise yourselves. With so little reason to. I used what magic influence I had in Camelot to unhinge three men and unleash a war."

Did she despise herself? No, apparently not.

"Is that very difficult?"

Her face did show some sadness. "I had done it before." She sounded softer now, looked softer. War for survival was not new to her.

"Not to my daughter?"

"No." Almost a frown now. She would not force love on Syrinx, she said. Fae did not lie. He knew that. Fae did not usually speak as straightforward as she did. A swan song then. A crow's song, cutting through her previous fancy of not speaking at all, the silent swan. Did she know this was farewell? "She needed a clear mind for this." Mab doubted it had been clear, doubted any mind human or otherwise ever was. There was always dust, always magic clouding it. "I promised your daughter things, your safety, a sword, I hold true to my promises, shall I promise you something? To ease your warring mind. Things I alone can control. I can't promise you that she shall come to no harm in the future. She will live. However I promise you whoever wins of the high lords or your damned friend, she will marry him and she will be queen. She is that dedicated to me. She will go to him, with or without my command." Pride, that was easy to recognize in her.

It must be easy, he thought, to make others love her when you love her yourself. The dangers of holding a fairy queen's love were generally well-known, if not specifically named. No good could come of this for his daughter.

"And you will leave her alone, let her be herself, a Christian. Release her from your hold. After this war when her role in your plan is fulfilled. You and your magic will not go near her again.

"I will never leave her. She will not be a true Christian. She was free to believe and she chose to believe in me."

She would not have left Syrinx in a marriage she did not want, alone in Camelot to her dying day. She would visit the queen she put on the throne regularly. She would closely watch the vessel for her new power over the land. The unborn heir to the kingdom would be born. She would watch him too, her true champion.

It was a promise she had made, so often in thought and implied and never, it occurred to her, told to Syrinx. That is the kind of thing humans would like her to say. Intentions, but her plans were hers alone. In the puzzle of human sadness, suddenly Syrinx' fit. In her human thinking the girl would marry and therefore lose Queen Mab. Marriage to this girl meant being dedicated, condemned to one person for all eternity. A forced disloyalty to Mab by Mab. In this life, and the one after that. She would have done all she could for Mab and as a result Mab would leave her.

"Is marriage what you want of her?"

"Wanted. I was convinced she would, for my sake. I was mistaken. I could not change your daughter." She had been looking at her purpose and not enough at the girl who was the very foundation on which she built her plan. An unfortunate oversight. "I have wronged her. With or without my influence she couldn't have become anyone else than who she is now. "

"When the battle ends, I will go back to the ruins you leave of Camelot."

"Good, it should be over soon. Send your daughter to me. I have something urgent to tell her."

She slipped back into her gloomy soullessness. He did not walk away, he had more to ask of her.

"I promised my daughter something as well."

"Did you now."

"There is something she must know as well, this is why I came."

"What then?" Her impatience resurfaced. It was an easy question, easier than the matters they had been discussing. But difficult to ask because of Mab's possible intent to keep it hidden. It did not involve speculation about the future. It concerned her personal past. Syrinx had had no knowledge as to what the answer might be and what emotion was linked to it in the queen's mind.

"Merlin."

"The wizard."

"You know another?"

"No, I know the one and all his faces."

"She wants to know how you know him."

"He is my son.

Are you disappointed, outraged, to learn that I am a mother after all?"

"Do you have more sons?" She shook her head.

"Do you?"

"Syrinx had a sister. She never told you that?" Mab looked away at this point. She had not been ashamed admitting to Merlin's tie to her, but she was feeling guilt over not remembering what Syrinx might have said on the topic of her sibling.

"What happened to her sister?" She did not ask, she demanded.

"She could have told you that. You could have asked her any question all the time she was with you. Several years as I understand it."

"Yes." The woman hissed now. "And she could have asked me hers. But why would I? I only want to know what is of value to me. I told you, this was her connection to court. Now I am forced to make new plans if I even have time for that."

That awful aggressive tone again. The man was strong to have stood through the furnace of all she said. "There is nothing you can still want from her."

Yet the demon still wanted his daughter. "My interests have changed. I have to talk to her." Now she cared. It was completely selfish.

It wasn't even to survive, she knew there was nothing left of her outside of this room. She would die knowing nothing about the girl who had brought her back into this world.

"I never asked too much of her, nothing I did thought she could not handle, she is very loyal. I have not hurt her." "You are wrong. You have hurt her."

"Please" a serpent's way of saying the word, but still, it had been spoken by her. "leave and tell Syrinx to come here."

She had no plan. She was at war, she hadn't been thinking about more than 5 years ahead and yet when she tried to she found a finished picture in her mind. When faith in her had been restored, the new king and queen, the queen was not called Syrinx in her mind she was called queen, had left ruling to their son. Then Queen Mab would have come and carried the queen away to live out her remaining days in the Land of Magic. If she wanted to, which she would. Where Mab could make her appear young again, if she wished it. Not for real as Merlin had achieved with his Nimue. She could not do that. She had seen him do this in her crystals after her return. She was impressed and frustrated at the unknown skill. The illusion she could make would be real enough to them.

The king, whoever he may be of the candidates, could have met an untimely end, if necessary, hastening his queen's journey back home to Faerie. Mab had not dared think it through. Correctly so, as it was now proven their efforts had been in vain. These things in her mind weren't plans. They were mere fantasies and she could not rely on her own fantasies to save her.

Though the moment had passed the Duke now asked.

"What happened to your son?"

"He left. Bring your daughter to me." It wasn't a command this time. It was despair?

Her evasive look indicated just that.

Mab thought she remembered the girl had said something about a sister. She had been too busy thinking up plans with the girl, looking at her. Listening had not come into it much.

"I had a sister once", Syrinx had told her. "terribly bossy, I…" Words, words, something she had said "at her every whim, I wish I had gotten to know her better." The sentence most likely sprang from Mab's imagination, expressing her own wish toward her servant girl.

Let this wish be mended. Somewhere in the future. Syrinx continued. "She died when I was…" she had said a pretty number "seven." It had been seven, Mab wanted it to be seven.

"No more." Mab had said, waving her hand over Syrinx' head.

She waved her father away now as well. She turned away from him. Her dress swirled over the pale crystals.

"My daughter wants the gnome gone when she returns. He's good company but he will bring you down if you let him. She believes you are letting him. He sides with another. He will betray you, if he hasn't already."

"Yes," she hardly sounded frustrated. "he has done so before."

The Duke left for his own quarters in this forsaken land to ready for departure. She will let him go. She is weak. She must know as well as him that it is safest for him to leave. Thus she continued to live up to her promise to keep him safe.

Perhaps the caves would do him the curtesy of crumbling upon him.

"Returns?"

Frik had watched her scream, covering up his ear. She could guess where the girl had gone. To stop the war she had caused. She had gone to battle for her.

Frik had indeed stayed in Queen Mab's innersanctum with her uncaring permission. His feet shuffled through crystal powder. A floor covered in shatters. All crushed. Not a crystal left. He had let her finish that important task before coming out of his hiding place. He beheld the full scope of the debris, he was in good spirits.

Witnessing her ultimate moment of despair was the least he could do. He let her have all the time she needed to fully experience the feeling. She didn't even seem angry with the girl for leaving. She was uninvolved . She understood why she had been abandoned.

The room had turned deadly quiet. All failing crystals had given up pretense. Frik had never known this room without the soft hum of magic. A joyous event, the end of servitude to a so called higher power.

Frik the old blight, the old nail to her non-existential coffin.

"You heard him, Frik?"

"Every word. She is gone.

You lost her."

"I can't cease the war."

"I know."

"She can perish there." Her main source of faith.

"Most likely to."

"What a sad face you have there, Mab, I wasn't aware you could do that..) It looks like not-understanding. That is a hostile stare now."

She lashed out at him, lightning did not follow her blow.

"There are many things you could have told her father just now to have him tell her. It wouldn't have been the same as telling her yourself, of course. At least you wouldn't have left in silence. As you are going to do now. Ah humans know goodbyes are hard. I am sure her father understands. It's good that you finally got to learn this too. Who is even to say he would convey your message to her. Personally I like delivering messages, but humans… they have a mind of their own.

"He is an honourable man."

Frik shrugged. "To his world's standards."

"A Christian can't save you."

Mab flicked her fingers dismissively at him Hush.

"You must tell her of my fate." The decline and end of magic.

"Perhaps, perhaps not."

There was no one left. No subjects, no alliances.

"You can't stay here. This place is falling apart as fast as you are."

Mab did not listen to him, it was beneath her. He was the traitor as always. His old skin most comfortable to wear.

"You are scarcely alive." He smiled.

It weren't merely his words that offended. He ridiculed her purely by being here.

Her greygreen eyes skimmer her decayed innersanctum.

With every dead crystal Mab had held she had longed to feel her mirthful smile when the crystal returned her some magic. How Frik had enjoyed seeing how that didn't work, over and over again. What she would give to experience that glow one more time before she has to leave her frail world. She couldn't stay behind and die with her crumbling realm. However much she wanted to stay, she must try everything she can to keep existing. The magic of this place was gone. She must move on… Her best chance of survival was to remain in the Heart of Magic. If there is but a morsel of magic in the world, it would come here. What magic is left, is solely keeping her alive and it is failing in that task. When her magic is going, gone, …

"There is magic elsewhere."