The thorny hedge tore, biting flesh, drinking blood as he pushed through from the fey to the real. Fear pulsed through veins powering him toward the daylight away from the perpetual twilight, away from the longing and the magic. The fey had started to tear itself apart, magic was losing itself in a from misty forgetfulness, land dissolving, creatures disappearing, everything unmaking. The real was pouring into the fey, its caustic touch rotting everything with its insipid spectral fingers as they clutched at more of the magic.
Weaving thorn and branch, Iain stepped bleeding through the gap as world breached world, light and darkness intertwined as finally the gate ejected the Faerie to the concrete pavement. People ignored the new man sitting bemused in the street, the fantastical was hidden here under the cowl of credibility, which only those mad enough or fey touched could pierce. Urgency propelled him to his feet, marching him towards his quarry. Passing the shops and empty houses. Faster and faster, running towards the void.
Friday night was eviction night, the cameras roiled, the crowd chanted, bustling against one another; baying for blood of a housemate from the “big brother” house. Magic was nothing any more, only self-made celebrity mattered. The darkling producer rubbed his hands gleefully as this was the Final, not only of this series but of his murder of the fey. That repulsive world that spurned him, tortured him with longing would finally be at an end because of people supplicated to “reality”. Behind his mask of flesh, the shadow smiled, watching the monitor.
Davina was working the crowd, hands shaken, selfies taken, a parade of vacuous pleasantries ushered from thin lips. She was his best creation, something made from his own shadow, peppered with bile and rot. Under the skin was the cancerous indifference suffused with dark ambition, sharpened nails oozing spite. No one saw Iain pounce, drawing a steel knife from his sleeve. Plunging it into her heart, he bounded on looking for the master. The crowd erupted, a panic strewn mess of mortal folk scattering, scampering, crushing one another. Away from the blooded fey, standing over the splitting presenter’s skin. Blackened corruption grew, clawing at the open wounds, ripping the suit of flesh asunder. Wet, ripping and pulsating tendrils snaked over the floor, whipping towards Iain, leaving pools of acrid goo in its wake.
“Davina” opened mouth and eye, fixing its gaze upon him “you should not be here, little fey, No one believes in magic any more. Only the real counts and this is our temple for these idiots to pray at, as we prey on them.” Silently Iain danced and skipped, dodging each barbed tentacle strike, moving closer to the creature’s heart as he drew his silvered dagger, striking fast and true. Dispatching the monster with his fey knife as a barb whipped across his cheek drawing blood and issuing rivulets of its dark venom into the cut.
The shadow shook from the control room, casting aside the producer’s flesh as the editing staff gibbered and jabbered, gaped mindlessly at the terror unfolding. The room exploded in hate and blood as the shadow grew in petulant magnitude, seeking out that faerie fly in the ointment. Gazing down upon his creation the master howled, “Davina” dead, Big Brother now exposed as a banal tool to syphon imagination from the humans, empowering him with their homogenised need for reality and the death of magic. Sick of the Fey that had spurned him, turned their back on his machinations of control and expelled him from the world into the real.
The poison ached in his veins, blood was turning to sludge as the toxic nature of condensed reality fought against the Faerie magic that flowed through him. He stood slack jawed as the shadow exploded from porta-cabin at the side of the Big Brother house, sending shards of corrugated shrapnel scything through air, slicing through the fleeing crowd. Blood and bodies littered the ground as is gained form, towering above Iain. The giant clothed in the blackest night let out another howl which rent the air causing any people left hiding to scurry away from the unfolding nightmare. Iain clutched his chest, the toxin reaching his heart unmaking him. He had lost. Magic had lost and now the world belonged to the Shadow, reality had finally won and the world was darker for it.