Halloween I.F. – “Going Dark” – Day 28

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No, Fern decided, weirdly reluctant. No, they shouldn’t try controlling Aris and Bannick. That should be a last-ditch attempt at best, something done to wrest their leashes away from Madoc, not something they set out to do in advance. They’d already seen how those spirits felt about their imprisonment. Fern didn’t want to be the cause of that.

Destroying the items… also felt wrong. The contract, maybe it’d be fine—but the bud? This was Aris’s literal freedom, removed from their own control. Destroying it would destroy the freedom itself. Aris would never get it back, and if their freedom was gone, not just under someone’s control…

Fern shuddered at the thought. 

Maybe it required blood. They were already bleeding, but this wasn’t the sort of thing they wanted to mess around with blindly, either.

They were going to need an expert opinion.

Bracing their rear against the overturned shelf, Fern swung their backpack around and dug out the journal with the references to binding a fairy and controlling a demon. Once again, as soon as they were touching the book, a combination of weakness and greed seemed to settle into their bones. They hated themself. They wanted to be who they were with this power. Only the power of these books would make them into anything worth anything—

That’s rough, buddy, they thought desperately, sucking deep, disgusting breaths in an attempt not to burst into tears again. This was a corruptive influence. A One Ring. They more they used it, the worse they’d get, probably—no, the better? that voice whispered. 

Either way, it was the only information they had right now.

With the flashlight, they did their best to read, awkward and shaky. The book described the binding ritual, done with salt and iron to carve the freedom out directly no matter how the captured fairy protested. Somehow, Fern thought that protest was a euphemism in this case. Once extracted, they must remain separated, so the fairy couldn’t take the bloom back. They must be forbidden from entering the room in which it was kept, and kept in the dark, ideally, to where that room even was.

Okay. That was something.

Next, Fern flipped to the page about controlling a demon. This one didn’t mention summoning, which was odd—it sort of implied the demon was already here, so surely there was something that Fern had missed—but again, involved surrounding them in a magic circle and bargaining with them until they signed a contract. As long as that contract remained safe, the demon would then be bound to obey the contractor’s orders until they enacted the contract’s demands or until that will was no more. Madoc had added, This can persist beyond death so long as the will itself endures.

Another note underneath it: Aris must be forbidden from damaging the contract.

God, Fern had so much power in their hands right now. They had just learned how to use spirits to do whatever they want. What other knowledge was contained in here…?

No, that wasn’t them again. They hoped, anyway. They hoped they weren’t considering slavery a good cost for knowledge. Fuck.

Hurriedly, they shoved the book back into their bag, wiping their hands off on their pants as if it could actually clean off the guilt. In their pockets, they felt the wards.

Fern closed their eyes.

It was time. They had to throw at least Aris’s ward away now, if Fern was to bring them here to give the bud back. And while technically they wouldn’t need Bannick here to destroy the contract… they felt he’d want to be there. He’d hate for Aris to get all the fun when he had to miss out on it.

It was a risk, Fern knew. If they threw the wards away and Madoc had given them a command, or somehow felt Fern’s interference and gave them one immediately, Fern could get whisked away before they could act.

But… Miranda had gone on ahead.

Fern thought that Madoc was probably a little distracted.

No more hesitation, they told themself firmly. It was time to commit.

Fern reached into their pocket, fingers closing around the paper, the spike. They wadded the paper up, took both out, and then pitched them as far from them as they could, watching them vanish into the chaos of the room.

Suddenly, the energies of the room were thick, even more choking than before. Fern shouted, “Aris! Bannick! Come here, quick!”

Bannick appeared. Aris did not, but Fern saw two green pinpricks of light glowing outside the door. Ah, right, Madoc had fucking forbidden Aris from entering.

“You’ve found them,” Bannick breathed, eyes focused hungrily on his contract.

“Yeah. Let’s get Aris free first, I have a question about yours,” Fern said. They reached over, closing a hand around the bud.

It fought in their grip like a cat in the carrier, panicking on the way to the vet. Fern jerked helplessly as a vine began to dig through the flesh of their hand; it hurt, it hurt, it hurt—

“Easy there—!” Bannick scooped Fern up in his arms—odd-feeling, wrong, but Fern was too focused on holding onto the thrashing bud to pay much mind—and bounded over the rubble like it was nothing, depositing Fern outside the door.

“Oh,” Aris said, and reached out, plucking the bud from Fern’s hand. The burrowing root came free with a gout of blood that left Fern reeling, light-headed from shock.

Aris gazed at it, their bloody freedom, expression enraptured, and then opened their mouth, swallowing it down. Shadows crawled over Aris’s skin as if fleeing it, rats from a sinking ship. They began to glow softly, emanating their own inner light.

They looked up at Fern in Bannick’s arms with a beatific smile, and—vanished.

Fern tried not to feel hurt. That was fair. Aris had been trapped here a long time. If they needed to go now—even if Fern thought they might have needed Aris’s help—that was fine, surely. It was the cost of not controlling them; they had the right to choose what they wanted.

Bannick lifted Fern’s bloody hand and licked it. “Now what?” he said softly. “Tick tock.”

Understood. They were running out of time. Fern tried to pull themself together against the way the room was trying to swim at the edges. “What were the terms of your contract?” Fern asked.

“To find Madoc new bodies,” Bannick said, “until he was satisfied, or had grasped immortality under his own terms.”

That… could be never. Bannick could be told to find people like Fern for sacrifice for the rest of eternity, trapped endlessly. “You must have been in a real bind.” 

“He left me in the circle for seven months,” Bannick said. “So yeah. Hurry, Guy.”

“It’s Fern,” Fern blurted. Maybe shouldn’t, but fuck, at this point…? They clambered back over, hand throbbing hard, and pulled the paper free from the mirror. It came out undamaged, which didn’t feel right, and they gave it an experimental, and fruitless, twist. “How do I destroy it?”

“Cover the signatures with blood,” Bannick said, hungrily. “Then you can tear it.”

And then Bannick would be uncontrolled, free to do whatever he wanted, no facade of civility or bowing to anyone else’s rules. Fern hesitated just a second, thought about Bannick on the other side of that bathroom door, and smeared their hand over the signatures.

Heat arched out from it, a sudden stifling wave. Bannick let out a shout, nearly a scream, and Fern quickly took the paper in both hands and ripped.

Somewhere, the lantern crashed to the ground and shattered. The room went dark except for the thin beam of Fern’s flashlight.

Fern fanned it around. For a moment, they thought they saw Bannick—but it was just his veil, draped over a shelf, and Fern’s own shorts, as if Bannick’s flesh had vanished completely, as if Bannick was no longer a body that existed in this world.

Fern suddenly felt horribly lonely, abandoned. They told themself again that, if this is what the spirits wanted, that was far.

Slowly, aching and sore and exhausted, Fern picked up the two items of clothing and stuffed it in their backpack. They crawled over the debris with just the flashlight in their hand, panning it around the area once they were able to stand. 

All the roots were gone.

God, they wanted to go home. They weren’t sure they could find a way back to the cottage if they tried, though, the paths winding and splitting and now unmarked.

Dully, they checked their pockets for anything that might help—and pulled out the compass they’d found in the cellar. It was pointing steadily to one specific exit, which felt promising. They took a few steps toward it, then paused.

Maybe …

“I want to find Madoc,” they said aloud, and tried to believe it. Tried to forget about home. Tried to think about Miranda, likely struggling against Madoc alone, about Aris and Bannick, who had been trapped here by this man. About everyone else like Fern who might be in danger.

And, sure enough, the compass’s needle switched to showing another exit.

They followed these, deep, deep into the dug earth until emerging finally into something new. It looked like the passage had connected to an old mine—dangerous, if so—and long empty tunnels went off in different directions.

And, against the bracing wood, a corpse was crucified here. At its feet, Fern could feel—no, Fern could see Miranda, bowed, shaking with fury, forced to her knees.

The corpse slowly raised its head. “Oh, little one, you’ve made it,” Madoc said, through rattling, dried lungs. His lips peeled back in a smile, his tone gentle. “Those traitors have abandoned you too, have they? Come here. You have it all wrong; they’ve been lying to you. This is a misunderstanding. I can make things clear, if you just help free me.”

[Comment below with a suggestion for Fern]

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