Sidhe na Daire

“We had them,” snarled the blackened form to the right.

“She was in my grasp,” his opponent snapped back, staring out from ice-blue eyes in a gypsy-featured face.

“We weren’t there for you to procure another plaything,” Dubh’s tone was sharp. “Vengeance was laid out before us like a banquet and you went haring off after some mundane little morsel like the petty little mouse you have always been! Calma and I were constantly making up for your shortcomings!” The final words were punctuated by snapping, whip-like tendrils of green-tinged energy that split the air with a crack as they lashed against Olcas’s shields and chewed into the tempered concrete at his feet. Dubh wished his older brother had been with him this time. The battle’s outcome would have played out much differently. But no, Olcas had been at his side. Another whip lashed out. It was unacceptable that the Sidhe had barely suffered in this encounter. Scathed or unscathed, not one should have been able to walk from the battleground. The Bas—deadly spirit women the Sidhe knew as the Namhaid, the scourge of the so-called Daoine Maithé—should have claimed victory and made of them victims every one. Dubh growled at the failure and continued to lash out at his brother the air sparked like a dozen downed electrical wires kept crossing connections.

“If you weren’t such a blind fool you would see the weapon that ‘morsel’ could be shaped into,” Olcas countered, the words steeped with contempt. From his fingers shot bolts of energy in tones of variegated reds.