The members of the Twelve had surprised me with the two people they selected to bond as Hosts of the Sitherns I was going to establish in Greenland and Canada. Huig was the Goblin King, while Innis was Clan Lord for the Loan Maclibuin. Neither race would have had a chance on Talahm. The Seelie and Unseelie would never consider sharing or giving political power to those they deemed lesser.

The Sidhe on Urt were different, thankfully. They hadn’t had the chance to divide along faction lines, or if they had the opportunity, they hadn’t had taken the chance. While Seelie and Unseelie existed, the bigotry that existed between those two species didn’t have the history of war the Sidhe of Talahm had to overcome.

The Sidhe of this world were too concerned with survival. They had been forced to ignore bigotry and division to deal with humans, Elves, Beastkin, Dwarves, and Vampires. That outside threat had forced the Sidhe to band together to become one people.

That cohesion became their saving grace. Living in a world with other species, especially humans’ intent on your destruction, they were forced into a mental paradigm of us versus them as a way of life. When everyone else is out to get you, and you have to depend on your own kind or face extinction, the difference between subspecies of Sidhe didn’t matter. Sidhe solidarity trumped the invasion of Man.

It had taken almost a week to gather the people needed to travel with me. Those willing to slight risk to accompany me through the mystical highway I would open betwixt and between. I needed more than one or two people for what I planned to do.

I didn’t have a Banshee and a pool of node magic to draw on to kindle a Sithern. Instead, I would need to use [Ritual] to invoke the necessary magics to waken each Sithern. A [Revel] would need to be invoked.

A [Revel] was called using [Ritual], blood, and sex to attract the magic of [Fairy] and add dimensionality and fertilizer to the awakening Sithern. I was hoping [Fairy] would respond by restoring Aziza to this world. For some reason, they had never developed on Urt, or they had faded away so long ago they had passed from the collective memory of even the Sidhe.

A new type of Demi-fey did not always accompany the birth of a Sithern, but the Demi-fey were created simultaneously. The tiny creatures are more attuned and connected to the properties of [Fairy], and the magic of birth and creation was the primordial essence the Demi-fey needed to be born. It is why the Sidhe believe that the death of the Demi-fey would mean the end of [Fairy] and Sidhe, without that spark of magic, who we were as a people ceased to exist.

The Aziza, as a people, were more focused and detail-oriented than most Demi-fey, but the classification for Demi was based on size, not on personality. The Aziza were the smallest species of Sidhe, their size only eclipsed by the true magical spark of Wisps that were more gaseous in form and function than solid.

It brought a certain seriousness and gravitas to the Demi that the other species ignored. It had taken eons for them to build a reputation as the perfect spy, their ability to slip past any ward making them effective, but they could go places no one else could.

The [Oracles] conversation with Balfour and Gwyn ap Nudd’s allowing him to stow away could most likely be attributed to the absence of Aziza on this world. Gwyn ap Nudd had said that no one not of my body would be allowed passage, the only way I could think of for the [Oracle] and Balfour to skirt that limitation was for him to hide inside my body or one of my companions.

With Balfour’s participation in [Revel], the Wild Magics and Fairy might be enticed to restore or populate his race on this world. I would try to exert enough influence as the Sithern woke, but even as the fulcrum that would activate [Ritual], there was little I could do but nudge events. If I could seed the governments of Man with Aziza spies, the Sidhe would gain a real advantage.

“Most of these people are refugees, their homes located on the shores of our land and destroyed by Greek fire as ships bombed them from offshore,” Morgan explained as we moved to great the people that had decided to take the risk and walk the paths between.

“Why weren’t those ships destroyed before they could bomb Sidhe homes and towns?” I demanded.

“Because they were protected and shielded from scrying by their Gods,” Morgan explained. Her decision to lead the Sidhe that Lleu Llaw and his retreat Underhill had abandoned had left her the most informed of the council of Twelve. And the most respected of the Sidhe abandoned.

She was a well-spring of information, intelligent and focused without the usual conceit that most rulers managed to fall victim to. She was too weary and too aware of the cost of survival for her people to worry about the trappings of power. I had grown to respect her myself over the past week.

Her efforts were tireless, her concerns more about her people and survival than trivial matters of status and rank. She treated fawning sycophants with contempt and desperate refugees with compassion. I had been given a quest to seat a King for the Sidhe, and I was coming to believe that Morgan would fit that role.

“The ships only attacked coastal towns that were devoid of Slaugh or Selkie. Without our magics and no way to reach them or attack the invading ships, there was no way to retaliate.”

“Why didn’t you employ anti-scrying formations?” I asked.

“What are those?” Puck asked.

It would make sense that he would be most interested in abilities that could foil scrying. He was the Sidhe most often associated with tricks and sneaking. If there were a type of magic that could prevent his actions from being discovered, he would be sure to master it.

“Simple formations that can be employed that obscure what you are doing from the magic scrying or Divine focus of your enemies. With Caesar and Ragnar Lodbrok determined to wipe you out of existence, these types of formations would create a ‘fog of war,’ occluding your actions from the enemy and hiding your people behind a curtain of obfuscation that not even the Gods could pierce,” I explained.

“I’m surprised a Sidhe formation master hasn’t suggested these devices. They are relatively easy to produce and very effective during times of war. The energies required to obscure our shores could be tuned to using the emotions from battle and the energy each attack generated to power the formations.

“The more afraid, angry, or blood-thirsty our people become, the stronger the formations would become.”

“No formation master suggested them because we don’t have formation masters,” Morgan explained.

“Why not?” I asked in disbelief.

“Because we don’t know what formations are,” she replied.

I shouldn’t have been surprised. With the loss of magic, the tools and tricks associated with that practice would have been lost or never developed in the first place. Formations required a talented magic user to understand the ebb and flow of magic to work properly. They worked even better if the person who created them was adept at mapping and understanding the workings of ley-lines and the nodes that formed along with them.

I spent a few seconds ignoring her statement. My mind focused inward as I rifled through my [Ring of Hidden Depths]. I had become a bit of a hoarder over the past few decades. But hoarding was almost a requirement when you had a spatial device with an all but infinite storage capacity.

It took longer than I’d liked and made me consider creating a spell to sort and organize the piles of treasures or junk I’d just heaped together, but eventually, I found what I was looking for. A series of instruction manuals for most of the skills practiced on Talahm.

“I have skill books for Formations, Arrays, Inscriptions, Enchantments, Portal construction, and Talisman creation,” I said as I began retrieving book after book from my storage device. Morgan directed a few guards who always followed her to start collecting them.

“Most of these are introductory manuals,” I explained as I finally added the last book to the growing pile of books. “They will show you the how, but more importantly, they will explain the why of each branch of study.

“These beginning manuals are steeped in theory, and anyone that studies them should be able to reach the apprentice level. I have additional manuscripts that will allow you to reach greater heights, but those can wait.

“I don’t want to influence too profoundly how you develop within these fields of study for now. It will be interesting to see what you can come up with on your own. Your ability to look at these skills with a fresh set of eyes should prove advantageous.

“With no expectation of what can and cannot be done, maybe you will create new wonders and innovations that surpass the constraints that the masters of my world labor under.”