Darkly Dreaming Demographic.

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The sound of waves crashing, heavy limbs, rain beating, the spray of the sea. Suddenly the room is the deck of a ship and the sea is churning it, tearing it apart like it was made of kindling, the sound it sets teeth to chattering. The terrible sound rivalled only by the sounds of the screams. An unnameable shapeless mass rears up from beneath the black waves. With one stroke of it’s barbed tendril snaps the mast and pulls the ship into black oblivion.

“Wake up Firbolg, you’ve been sleeping too long – Inish Alga needs you.” A honeyed familiar voice said, the smell of blackberries, the touch of soft skin.

“That old name, – no one and nothing needs me for anything but shedding blood”

“Then so be it” The woman said. “Awaken Firbolg, embrace your destiny.”

“Destiny? Tailtui?”

The Firbolg opened in his eyes in who knows how long, his vision was blurred and he saw a blackened shape hovering over him.

A delicate white hand reached out to him and without thought he snatched it and pulled the figure closer.

“Who are you?” Cur snarled putting emphasis on each word.

The woman yanked her hand from his grasp and Cur grinned as she recoiled in shock. Her hood falling back off her head revealing a young elven girl with raven hair and pale skin.

Cur laughed, bearing his teeth and boiling off into a low cackle.

“The spurned druidess” He laughed falling back into the makeshift bed the fisherman had fashioned for him. The bed consisting of furs and old fish nets.

The girl that stood before him twisted her pretty white face and took a deep breath tucking her dark hair behind her pointed ears. She finally spoke. “It is I, the little Druidess, here to save your miserable life yet again” Birog hissed.

“How did you know I was here?” The firbolg asked.

“I saw it in a dream” Birog said.

Cur grinned and laughed that mocking laugh.

The dog bounded towards Cur sticking his snout too close for his liking, the Firbolg pushed the dogs snout away. “Away beast”

The dog whimpered.

Cur stared at the fisherman and asked “Who rules Inish Alga?” in his low croaking voice almost as if it was rhetorical or a threat.

“I haven’t heard that name in a long time” Manannan said puzzled. “Oh, still it is Bres but no one has seen him for a long time, ever since the rituals on samhain began.”

Cur looked at the Druiddess and she sighed deeply.

“Every year” She said. “Every year they take two thirds of the corn and the milk-.”

“And the children” Cur finished her sentence stonily.

“Yes” She seemed to shiver as she said it, clutching her arms around herself. “Ever since Bres went into hiding we have returned to the taxes our ancestors suffered under the Fomorians.”

She continued slowly, breathing deeply as if it pained her to say it. “Every year, the children are lead to the hill of Tara and taken down into the catacombs and never seen again.”

“It is punishment” Cur said.

“There is a new king, same as the old king- a shadow ruler, he rules but nobody knows it, he’s ruled all this time using Bres as his puppet. The power behind the throne, the unseen hand.”

“What is his name?” Cur croaked.

“He is called Balor of the baleful eye, a powerful king of the Fomor.”

“Preposterous, the Fomor are a myth” Manannan who had been leaning quietly with his arms folded against the wall of his shack suddenly chipped in. “A story to keep children from swimming in deep waters, like the kelpie.” He scoffed.

“Is that right?” Birog smirked. “They are here and they have always been here and now finally they dane to show themselves in this new tax.” She hummed to herself for a moment and walked over the silver arm that was resting on Manannan’s table.

Manannan reached for his prize instinctively. “Now wait a minute, I found that, it’s mine!” He protested.

“This doesn’t belong to you” She said then turning to Cur “It doesn’t belong to either of you”

Cur grinned broadly “The previous owner has no further use for it” He chuckled in his deep scarred voice.

“Can you stand?” Birog prodded.

Cur sneered and glanced at the fisherman and his dog before looking back at her. He pressed his one hand against the dirty wooden floor of the fisherman’s shack and rose slowly and stiffly to his feet.

He stood with some difficulty at his full height towering above both elves. He moved as if he’d forgotten how to use his limbs.

Manannan sighed seeing his difficulty “Take this ya bloody fool” He said as he handed him a stick.

Cur glared at the fisherman and reluctantly took the stick and put it under his arm to take his weight.

Birog smiled as she regarded him, running her fingers along the intricate lines of the silver arm with it’s strange magical symbols.

“Walk with me Firbolg” She smiled and walked out the door of the small scruffy fishing shack.

Cur followed his silver appendage, limping like a cripple but still with a vicious quickness to his step. His footfalls hard and angry as if he hated the ground he walked on for betraying him.

He pushed the door open.

“We meet again ‘slayer of Slaghtaverty’” Said a familiar and sickly mocking voice.

The voice came from a strange robed figure. On eitherside of him were similar non-descript and ominous comrades holding long and queer barbed weapons. The smell of seaspray and rotten fish and seaweed rose above them like a dense fog.

“Perhaps you prefer ‘Slaughterer of Slaghtaverty’, I myself think ‘slayer’ rolls off the tongue. You don’t recognize me?” The one in the centre said as he took back his hood revealing a cocky but bonnie young man, grinning with sharp barbed teeth. “Perhaps you recognize this” He said as he held up a weird and familiar sword. He smiled and tapped the edge, the sound it made was painful to the ears a singing in an esoteric and guttural language that Cur had heard before.

“Tethra!” Cur spat as he felt his scar burning with the magic of the sword.

“So your memory didn’t suffer as the crabs fed on you” He laughed.

“Who are you, get off my property!” Manannan followed after shouting at the strange oddly shaped robed figures.

“Silence! Who is this peasant?” Tethra asked turning back beyond the curtain of robed figures.

“He is no one my lord” Birog said as she passed through the crowd, the silver arm resting in the crux of her arm like a lamb being carried to slaughter. “He is of no consequence.”

“Very well” he said turning back, the corners of his mouth turning up like a snake’s to smirk at the firbolg. “You will come with us Firbolg or we will flay your friend where he stands.”

Cur looked at Manannan and grinned broadly. Manannan’s blood froze in his veins as he felt he had just sired a scorpion on his back.

Cur laughed, a wicked cackling laugh and he said. “Do whatever pleases you – ‘my lord’” He said as he dropped the grin from his and stared stonily at the traitor Druiddess.

“He is weak” Birog stated with a cold shrill glee in her voice. “He can barely stand and without this” She said stroking the strange silver arm “He cannot hope to escape.”

“King Balor wishes an audience with you last of the Firbolg, will you deny him?” Tethra said sharply with an indignant tone to his voice.

“If you knew he was here why didn’t you take him while he slept?” Manannan asked.

Birog grinned and said “I wanted to see the look on his face.”

“I will meet your king” The firbolg croaked and grinned wickedly.