For the first time in a long, long time, Hallows Eve approached with a peculiar uneasiness in the air. All around the world, things went bump in the night. In an isolated part New South Wales, a man spent the month convinced a creature lurked in the shadows of his ranch, stealing away livestock to work its way up to snatching the man himself. In Munich, an old woman swore she saw a pair of figures drenched in blood dancing on a rooftop. Across South America, seven hundred and twelve men, all born on the same day, reported a visit in the middle of the night from a woman dressed in blue silk and possessed by a near vengeful desire for sexual gratification. Some denied her, causing her to instantaneously vanish. Others accepted her and, seemingly as a result, developed an extreme aversion to cats and the color yellow.
Most people noticed nothing different. They didn't notice their urgency to get home before dark or to triple check the locks on their doors at night. The religious spent a little more time on their prayers, and the non-religious spent a little more time bathed in the light of the secular world. Both groups felt the press of something otherworldly on the edges of the shadows, and neither had much interest in examining that press too closely. Other things, non-human things, stirred for the first time in centuries. Many of them remained caged in places like the Coven house where Grimbough kept an eye on things. Others emerged from forgotten places and did horrible things. In these cases, the horrible things happened to horrible people, which is the best one can hope for when it comes to the horrid.
The winds of magic shifted and stirred with each passing day. More doors and more hallways appeared in the witches' abode. Nea and Tabby spent their remaining time before the Feast preparing and storing magical energy. Conach worked as a congenial host for the variety of creatures they'd created over the past month. None of them gave him too much trouble, though Stacy was quite particular about the management of her ranch. Conach enjoyed the responsibility with his only complaint being that Nea and Tabby couldn't make time to visit the various creatures with him. All of them, though, began to think of life after Samhain. Conach wouldn't be returning to Fae. Nor would Tabby return to her life of isolation and dark studies. Instead, they would go on living together in the Coven's house with a full eleven months before their next urgent worry about the fate of the world cropped up. At least, they hoped.
Of the three, Nea had the least trouble imagining her life going forward because she'd been imagining the same life for as long as she could remember. It terrified her more that the imagined life would soon become a reality. Idle time for magical pursuits, a pair of lovers with complete devotion not only to her, but each other, and a house filled with doors to all sorts of places to explore. Grimbough kept alluding to a lengthy list of issues he needed assistance with. In their conversations, Ineni mentioned unspeakable horrors threatening to burst upon the world in the way someone might mention potential rain on Tuesday. A heavy obligation to deal with various sorts of doom did loom over everything, but such was a witch's life, even a nymphomantic one. Nea took the good with the bad, and she eagerly awaited the chance to lunge headfirst into her new responsibilities.
First, they needed to hold the Feast. As promised, Ineni, Edgar, and Grimbough led the charge on making arrangements. Nea did help where she was needed, but the crux of her involvement occurred on Halloween itself. Grimbough brought the Coven to a large stone arch built into the wall at the end of one of the sprawling corridors. Nea and Conach recognized many of the markings on the iron door contained within the arch as identical to the ones which had appeared on the door used to summon the fae. "A magical lock, as you can see," Grimbough explained. "Only witches can open this one."
Nea could see the strands of magic tied around the door and linked to the various runes. With deft hands, she touched each in sequence and watched the small lightshow as the magical bonds unraveled. Conach did the honor of actually pulling the great iron handle and letting the door swing open. A rush of cool, moist air flooded through the opening, and they stepped inside. Beyond the door was a grassy amphitheater surrounded by doors of all shapes and sizes. A few even floated in midair while others hung against the fabric of reality itself, always appearing to be facing the observer, no matter which way they approached. Most of the doors looked dormant, but a few glittered with magic.
"The sky is different," Tabby observed, head craned toward the stars. "The stars are at the wrong angle."
"This is Faerie," Conach said. "Part of it, anyway. The part that merges in to other realities. Walk in any direction long enough, and you'll wind up right back here. As worlds go, this one is both small and infinite. Unbounded, filling in all the gap between one world and the next, whichever that might be. Never made an ounce of fucking sense to me."
Nea walked down the short hill from their door, admiring the place with wonder. The grass waved in a pleasant breeze. Every other blade of it was blue rather than green, giving it the effect of mirroring the slightly changing shades of the night sky overhead. She didn't see a moon or any other source of light, but she could see quite well in the pale luminescence of the strange world. Beyond the amphitheater was a lake of pure silver. While either direction to her side stretched endlessly with the blue-green grass, before her, the silver ocean seemed to invite her to wade into it, walking out into an eternity of shifting, shimmering water. Nea withdrew one of her magical prisms from a pocket.
Tabby joined her at the side of the strange water. "There's so much of it. Does it all work like the Witcheye? Could we make a dozen of them and have picture in picture?"
"No idea," Nea answered. "I think it might be alive or sentient to some degree. Not sure taking some without permission would be wise." Nea took hold of Tabby's hand, closed her eyes, and whispered words of offering. As she did the small prism floated out over the lake, dropping down to skim along the surface.
The mercurial water rippled. A small arm rose out and enveloped the magical gift, drawing it down beneath the water. With a violent swirl, a massive torrent shot up into the sky before arcing out in six different directions. Like waterfalls of molten silver, the water formed into immense floating monoliths, six of them looming on the horizon. As they solidified, bright, violet light cracked through the surface of each, etching words on their faces which glowed over the gathering area.
"It's like we're standing in the Witcheye basin," Conach said, voice trembling with awe.
"Try to pace out your astonishment," Nea warned. "It's only going to get weirder."
From behind them, Grimbough swept into the clearing, followed closely behind by Ineni and Edgar. While the mouse woman seemed impressed, the others barely acknowledged the world around them. Grimbough stood to the side as a small army of goblins tromped through the door carrying all sorts of things — chairs, tables, boxes, crates, odd statues, altars, yard games, cauldrons, a few microwaves for some reason.
Ineni and Tabby followed some of the goblins around the massive amphitheater, directing them where to put things while also settling their strange disputes and spritzing them with magic when they got distracted with each other's bodies. Conach stayed with Nea as she began to work through another complex spell for uniting the energies of the different monoliths. He didn't have much to do other than offer emotional support so he watched the parade of furnishings with amusement to pass the time.
After the goblins came Edgar's own militia of miscreant dough-balls. After the goblins set up a part of the amphitheater as a field kitchen, the dough-balls went to work stoking fires, connecting magical electric outlets (a permission granted by proxy from Edgar), and laying out supplies. Their brethren carried through platters of meats, non-sentient doughs, some pre-cooked dishes, boxes of pizza stolen from various shops, pies, cakes, whole skewered pigs, ethereal dishes, strange things which only Conach would consider eating, and dozens of other foodstuffs.
Grimbough joined the fray setting up the tables in specific areas near specific doors. He supervised the table settings specialized to creatures of all sorts. While they didn't receive many responses, the gourd-man insisted on being prepared for any unannounced arrivals. Conach caught his ear at one point while stealing some food and asked how Grimbough could leave the house. "I haven't, technically," the steward explained. "This realm is currently an extension of the Coven house. Even if it wasn't, I am perfectly permitted to go where I please, assuming the mistress gives me permission."
Conach considered reminding Grimbough that needing permission isn't exactly a state of blanket permitted, but they'd been getting along better lately, and Conach didn't want to sour their progress.
The hours ticked by out in the earthly realm. The sun moved over the Coven house, but in the realm of the Feast, the ethereal light remained constant. Only the growing appetites, both for food and sex, gave any indication of the passage of time. Both appetites were stoked by the wafting smells and energy upon the air. Nea's work charged everyone and everything with a fervent need to fuck. Perhaps more potent, though, was Edgar's mastery of cooking filling the amphitheater with the scent of foods unimaginable. Conach swore Edgar had somehow dug into his memories and remade a dish once enjoyed on the cliffs overlooking Queen Titania's summer cottage.
Eventually, Nea concluded her spellwork. While the majority of the creatures in the glade saw nothing different, the magically attuned could see an intricate latticework of magical energy binding the six ominous stones to each other and to a point between them. The effort left Nea tired and strained. She took the opportunity to sneak off with Conach for a quickie before the guests arrived.
* * * * *
With the hour approaching, Conach and Grimbough went to retrieve their wards. Some arrived of their own will. The vampires, Lucas and Priscilla, glided through the doorway with grace. The ghosts, Beverly and Thomas, arrived on a phantasmal motorcycle which caused a tittering stir among the goblins and garnered a wearied gaze from Grimbough. Conach nudged him in his stick-ribs with a comment about high spirits before they returned to the house to fetch others.
