Dullahan 'Choose Your Own Adventure' Story - Part Six (sfw) (Patreon)

Whoop! Friday has come round again, and that can only mean one thing - more dullahan! This time we get to know the new female dullahan a little bit, and a course of action is (finally) decided upon!

The choice at the end of this is only a tiny one, but I'll give it to patrons only this time - anyone from the 'shadows' tier ($1) upwards. Next time, things hot up, and we finally go into the mines and start getting some answers!!

It suddenly seemed beyond childish to cower in the bushes with your eyes closed, as if that would make them go away. No, you knew you would have to step out; at the very least so that D would not think poorly of you. Taking a slow inhale, you stepped calmly from your hiding place, as though you were simply out for a walk, and approached the two intimidating fae and halting at slightly more than a polite distance. 

Swallowing, you looked first at D, who smiled, and then glanced apprehensively at the female. 

She, in turn, cast a sidelong look at D, raised an eyebrow, and spoke to him in a rich, resonant voice, “She does not look surprised. She knows you,” she stated. 

He nodded once, the ghostly flames that comprised his head seeming somehow fainter that evening. 

“You involved a human in this?” she snarled, taking a step towards him, clawed, pale hands clenching into tight knots of anger. 

“I had little choice,” he countered quietly, cowed but standing his ground. “She found my head… However, she acted honourably.”

The female froze, fixing D with a look of true scorn, and yet she didn’t seem particularly surprised by this news. In fact, she raised a white eyebrow and sighed. “Justice, will you never learn?” she asked, all the bluster going out of her in a rush of breath, like the wind among tall, blanched winter grasses. 

D lowered his head and stared at the dusty road beneath his black boots like an admonished child. His greenish hair slid forwards over his shoulder and you suddenly recalled what it had felt like to run your hands through the silky length of it. As if your mind were little more than a glasshouse full of flowers, the female dullahan seemed to peer in at you with those intense, red eyes, and your cheeks flushed, unbidden. 

“Well,” she snorted. “Are you going to introduce yourself?” she barked. 

“You want my name?” you asked hesitantly. These were fae after all. 

“I want something to call you,” she clarified brusquely, and your heart clenched. Gods, but she was intimidating. D never exuded this kind of presence. “What you choose to give me is up to you,” she added curtly. 

Your eyes flickered to D’s face, your heartbeat hammering, and he smiled gently. It’s alright, his expression said, your name is safe with her.

Taking another breath, you told her your name, hoping that perhaps a little trust might soften her to you. Instead, she raised her eyebrow again. “That was rash,” she said. “Oh well, it’s your choice.”

D raised his head and looked pleadingly up at her. Yes, you realised, she was even taller than D. “Ten,” he all but whined. “Come on, she’s putting herself in harm’s way to help us…”

“That is as close as you will come to revealing my name to her,” she said, true anger flaring like a hot coal. But, a second later, her shoulders dropped an inch and she ground her jaw. “However,” she said, looking at you more closely. “I admit that having a human, and -” she added, glancing with her brilliant red eyes into the basket on your arm “- a herbalist, might be…” 

She trailed off, and D interjected flatly, “…invaluable.”

To your surprise, where you had expected her perhaps to cuff him up the side of the head for being cheeky, the dullahan to which D had referred as ‘Ten’ suddenly barked a laugh. It was a soldier’s braying laugh, but one of true delight. “Oh Justice,” she said, her tone warming, becoming fond, almost as though she were an older sister speaking to a beloved younger brother, who also happened to be the unluckiest little troublemaker she’d ever come across. “What am I going to do with you?” 

He grinned back at her, a flash of bright white, and then he looked at you. “What are you doing here?” he asked. 

“I came to see if I could get into the mayor’s house on the pretence of bringing more herbs for her headache…” you offered. “I said I’d try, after all.”

“Don’t bother,” Ten said, her voice honed to the business-like sharpness of a sword blade. 

That took you by surprise. “Oh?” you croaked, adjusting the basket. You couldn’t help feeling like she was marching in and stealing D’s and your plan from underneath you. 

Ten licked her lips and then folded her arms across her chest, tilting her hips to one side as she regarded you pensively. Intimidating as she was, you couldn't help but think just how beautiful she was too, with those fine, spidery black lines fanning across her ice white skin, and those completely red eyes, her sharply-defined features framed by white-blonde hair which fell down her back in a thick plait. “Come,” she said, clearly making her mind up. She turned abruptly away and went to her stallion’s side. She stroked his neck, murmured something to him, and then began to walk along the road, away from the mayor’s house with her horse in tow. 

D whistled softly, and Midnight trotted over to his side, pausing momentarily to greet you, namely by nudging you affectionately in the ribs with her velvety black muzzle. You chuckled softly despite your nerves, and rubbed the whorl of fur between her eyes. “Sorry,” you whispered conspiratorially to her. “No carrots just now, but if you ask D nicely, maybe he’ll bring you by later…”

D, who was watching from a little distance away, laughed quietly. “You think you can buy my horse’s affections out from underneath me, do you?” he asked as you walked with Midnight to catch up to him. Ten was observing silently from the road just a little way ahead, looking both baffled and intrigued at the banterous closeness you had with the other dullahan. 

“Oh, I don’t know that I’d got that far,” you said, patting Midnight’s smooth coat and earning a soft whicker from the mare. “But it never hurts to be nice…”

“True,” he agreed. 

“D?” you asked in a low murmur. “What’s going on? Why the change in plans? And… who is she?”

D took a moment to reply, and for a horrifying few heartbeats, you thought the two of you would catch up with Ten before you got any kind of answer, but he did give you one. “She’s… She’s sort of like my commanding officer…” 

“Dullahans are like soldiers?” you asked. 

“Not quite,” he said. “But… oh, it’s complicated, and it involves talking about how we’re made. She’s…”

Ten cut in at that point. “I’m his mentor,” she said curtly. “I guided him when he was first reborn, helped him, taught him, and, so help me, I tried to get him to open up to magic. I think I succeeded on all but the last…” 

“Right,” you said, not quite following, but doing your best. “So… what’s the new plan?”

“We need to get into those mines,” she said without preamble. “Are you aware that your mayor is a mage?” 

You almost choked on your surprise. “What?”

“Apparently not,” she said flatly. “I didn’t think magic was well regarded in these parts, so I’m not surprised she’s hiding it. She’s definitely a mage, though, and a powerful one at that. I think it’s safe to assume she’s the one who set the wards on the entrance of the mine to keep creatures sensitive to magic out.”

“Or in?” D ventured. 

“Or in,” she concurred. “Though at this stage, I think it more likely that she wants to contain whatever she’s up to in there. I have looked at the crystal which Justice has recovered, the one which the young goblin has been walking around with,” she added. 

“You told her about Kravik?” you asked, eyebrows buckling upwards in sudden anguish. 

D looked chagrined at his betrayal of your trust. “I’m sorry,” he said. “But it was pertinent. We found more in the mayor’s study.”

“And you went back into her study? What’s she going to think? That Martha went back in there, that’s what,” you fired, blood pressure rising. “You’ll get her into trouble, and it’s nothing to do with her.” You were breathing hard, and one more accusation slipped out before you could stop it. “You might see the whole picture here, but the rest of us just see the little people caught up in it: the goblins, my best friend, the mayor’s housekeeper…”

Your voice was loud among the dark trees, and Midnight snorted, as if in agreement. D’s shoulders slumped further as despondency settled into him. “I’m sorry,” he said. “We were very careful.”

“I hope you were,” you snarled under your breath. Risking a glance up at the dullahan called Ten, your heart lurched sideways in your chest when you saw that she had turned her head fully to stare straight at you. Caught in the full force of those blood red eyes, your feet faltered. “What?” you asked in a shaky, breathy voice. 

Ten looked from you to D and back again. “I see why you chose to use her, Justice,” she said. 

“Use me?” you repeated. 

Ten winced. “Pardon,” she amended. “I only meant that you have a just heart,” she said, switching her gaze to D’s face and adding, “Like him.”

“Oh,” you murmured, embarrassed. “So… the mayor is a mage, and she’s locked you out of the mine. I assume you can’t get in either?” you asked Ten, and she nodded, looking pained at her impotence. “So…” you said slowly, seeing where this was going. “You now want me to go in, don’t you?”

“I do,” Ten said. “Justice is somewhat reluctant to allow it.”

A cocooning warmth billowed up in your chest at that, and you shot him a smile that made his foxfire markings flare up suddenly in what could only have been a blush. When you looked back at Ten, she was shaking her head slightly, but you caught the minuscule curve at the corner of her pretty lips and the new glint in her scarlet eyes. 

“Alright,” you said. “I’ll do it. I suppose I could pretend I was there to visit Kravik or something?” you suggested, but Ten was already shaking her head. 

“No,” she said. The syncopated clop of the two horses’ hooves on the road back into town was the only sound for a moment, before Ten went on. “We’ll need something more concrete than that.”

The three of you lapsed into pensive silence for a while, until something came to mind which Vhorn had said when he’d brought his sick wife in, and indeed something that Minna had been raving about too. “Cave beetles,” you said. 

“What?” both D and Ten asked as one, and you had to laugh. 

“Cave beetles!” you said again, giggling. Ten looked at you as though doubtful of your sanity, and you elaborated. “Another goblin was brought in today, raving about an infestation of cave beetles. They’re a nightmare to remove once the nest gets too big, but I can go in and fumigate them out. I’ve got the herbs, and there are a few types of cave algae that grow down there that are particularly useful in some of the salves I make. It’s perfect!” you said, almost clapping your hands in delight. The basket swung wildly for a moment, and you almost lost the contents over the sides. “I can snoop around anywhere I like on the pretext of looking for beetles! It’s not as though I’ll have to ask the mayor for permission. Vhorn’s the overseer: he’ll let me walk right in.”

“I still don’t like it,” D muttered.

“Well, until you can get past that barrier, Justice, it’s the best plan we’ve got,” Ten snapped.

She pulled a lump of the now-familiar crystal from a pocket in her own black jacket, and unlike the way it had sat dead and quiescent in D’s hand, it began to glow furiously. 

“There’s something about this,” she said. “It’s as though it’s calling to me. It wants something from me.” 

She turned it over in her clawed hands, her talons flashing like polished ivory in its brilliant glow. It was brighter in her palm than it had been in Kravik’s, that was for sure.

“The brighter it glows, the stronger the pull on me,” she said, and her voice became detached. It was unnerving, like the tone of your teacher’s voice when she’d stitched up her own leg after a nasty cut: detached, academic curiosity rushing in to take the place of fear or panic. “It’s as if it’s trying to awaken something in me, but because it’s already pulling on my magic, it… it’s just… drawing me in…”

“Ten…” D growled in warning. And when she didn’t respond for a moment, eyes glazed and heavy, D hissed at you, “Cover your ears.”

“Why?”

“I’m going to use her true name, and she’s not given it to you yet.”

“Oh,” you said, dutifully, if reluctantly, closing your palms over your ears and humming softly. You heard the sharp note of D’s voice, but not the word itself. A moment later, Ten blinked at him, and pocketed the stone. 

“This truly is deadly stuff,” she commented. “My thanks,” she added as a gruff afterthought to D. 

She swallowed and stared at the road ahead of her. The lights of the town were beginning to come into view between the trees now, and the dullahans’ steps slowed, their horses following suit without command. 

Ten crossed her arms again and stared down at you. “I want to work on something. I need to study this a little more,” she said, patting the pocket to which she had returned the crystal. “Carefully. And only after that do I want you to go to the mines,” she said to you. “I shall return in two nights’ time,” she added, slinging her horse’s reins over his head and mounting in one smooth motion. Seated in the saddle, she towered over you, and you almost shrank back in fear. The combination of her glowing red eyes and those of her stallion drove home the true nature of what these creatures really were. They were not gentle spirits, but seekers of truth and justice, unstoppable, virtually un-killable, and tenacious as bulldogs. “Do not enter the mines before I come to you,” she impressed upon you. “And Justice,” she warned, her face softening once more to that sisterly affection. “Please be careful.”

“I will,” he promised. “Thank you for coming, Ten.”

She closed her eyes and bowed her head before turning her stallion in a wheeling arc, racing away like the wind, hooves sparking red on the road. 

In the wake of her departure, you actually swayed slightly, and D’s hand shot out to your elbow to you. “She has that effect on a lot of people.”

“She’s terrifying,” you breathed, still staring along the empty road after her.

“She likes you,” he chuckled. 

You turned sharply to stare incredulously at him. “What?”

D’s laugh was warm as firelight and just as welcoming. “I think she respected the fact that you came out to confront us, and that you didn’t let her trample all over you. She admires courage.” 

“Right. Why do you call her ‘Ten’?” 

He shuffled, getting as uncomfortable as you supposed all fae must when the subject of names is brought up. “It’s a shortening of her true name,” he said reluctantly. “Please, don’t ask me any more.”

“I won’t,” you reassured him, though curiosity burned brightly inside you. “You want to come back to mine? I still have about a million questions…”

“I can’t stay too long,” he said. “I’ve got work of my own to do at her suggestion, but yes, I’ll come for a while.”

You knuckled the small of your back and grunted softly. 

“You alright?” he asked. “Here, let me take that,” he added, reaching for the basket. 

“Thanks,” you said. “Been a long day, you know?” you said. “What with another being brought in sick. You really think it’s the crystals then?”

He nodded. “Ten does too. The way she’s reacting to them…” he shuddered visibly. Midnight interrupted by jostling him roughly with her nose and then whickering at you. “What is it?” he asked. 

She repeated the gesture, and then turned broadside to you, gesturing at her saddle with a wave of her big head. 

“Oh,” D said, and then laughed. 

“Something I’m missing?” you said, looking from horse to dullahan. 

D scratched absentmindedly at the empty collar of his jacket. “She thinks I should offer you a ride. She thinks you look tired.” 

You stared at the mare incredulously. She had to be sixteen hands tall, easily. She was also a lot more intelligent than you’d really given her credit for, and it was a little unnerving. “I’m not even sure I can reach the stirrup,” you laughed. 

“I’ll give you a leg-up,” he said, setting the basket down at his feet and lacing his fingers together to form a cradle. “Go on.”

“Are you sure?” you asked. “This isn’t some fae trick? I’m not going to be whisked away to the fae realm, never to be seen among mortals again?” 

D’s laugh was again so full of joy that you couldn’t keep your own lips from smiling. “Didn’t I swear on my true name, Justice, never to bring you to harm?”

“Technically I could be perfectly safe in the fae realm and you’d still not have broken your promise…” you said, and a flash of something crossed D’s face at that. 

It was hard to tell behind the constantly swirling mist, but his eyes seemed suddenly duller, and his eyebrows furrowed softly. He straightened out of the slight crouch and let his hands fall softly to his sides again. “You really think I would deceive you like that?” he asked in a small, hurt voice. 

Shamed, you stepped close to him and laid your hands on his upper arms, feeling the solid muscle beneath them. It was such a stark contrast to the intangibility of his ghostly head that it made the body beneath your fingers seem twice as real somehow. “I’m sorry,” you said. “I don’t think you’d deceive me.” 

At that, Midnight bashed you in the back and sent you sprawling into his arms with a gasp of surprise. With your nose pressed up against D’s jacket, you inhaled the warm scent of him and let it fill you. Gods, but you were falling for him. “Apologies for my mare’s behaviour,” he rumbled quietly. “Are you alright?”

“Never better,” you laughed. “Come on.” 

D pointed a taloned finger at his mare and said, “Subtle.” In answer, she whickered and opened her eerie, wide-hinged mouth to reveal her sharp teeth for a moment.

D only shook his head fondly, and stepped close to give you that leg-up. Once aboard, you gripped the pommel of her saddle very tightly. D held her reins in his right hand, and over the crook of his left arm he hooked the basket: it would almost have been funny if you weren’t so high up. 

“Wait!” you suddenly yipped in alarm. “What if I’m seen? Everyone knows I don’t have a horse… I don’t think I’ve ever actually even been on a horse before…”

He laughed. “I told you before that I can be unseen when I wish it. That extends to Midnight, and anything or anyone on board…”

“Oh.”

“So just keep quiet, and no one will notice us.”

“I don’t understand…” you said. “I thought you didn’t use magic?”

He sighed. “It’s complicated. Some dullahan magic is universal. It’s… part of who we are. We can move through almost any door, given. We can move unseen through the shadows, given. We cannot move in daylight, given. We -”

“Wait, what? You can’t move around during the day?”

He shook his head. “Keep quiet now,” he warned you as the door to the inn up ahead opened and a few revellers spilled out into the night. 

You held your breath, but, just as he said, no one paid your passing the slightest bit of notice. 

The further you got from town the more you battered him with endless questions, some of which he could not answer, about being a dullahan. It seemed that daylight sapped them of strength and could actually weaken them almost to the point of death, and that Ten was a very old dullahan and something of a legend, even among the fae, and that like all dullahan, she had once been human. “So… humans can be made into fae?” you asked. 

He ground his jaw at that. “After a fashion,” he said. “But most dullahan were not created willingly.”

“What?” The thought of him hating what he did, despite seeming to believe in, well, justice, suddenly stabbed something painful into your chest. 

“Don’t get me wrong,” he said, glancing up at you and smiling sweetly, “I like what I do well enough now, but I didn’t have the easiest time of things right after I was reborn. Most of us don’t, to be honest. Maybe that’s why we don’t have the best reputation for being friendly.”

Somehow you couldn’t think of anything to say to that, so you sat there in thoughtful silence, swaying gently on Midnight’s back, for the last little bit of your journey. 

Once outside your little hut on the other side of town, Midnight drew to a halt on her own, as though following D’s thoughts, and you slid your feet from her stirrups. “May I?” D asked playfully, and you looked down to see that he’d set the basket down already, and had raised his arms to take you from the saddle and lower you to the ground. 

You had to bite back a giggle. You nibbled your lip, and then nodded. 

You swung your right leg up over the front of the saddle instead of behind, and he took your waist easily in his strong grip. Holding you firmly but gently, he bore you to the ground, his hands lingering longingly at your hips once your feet had touched the dirt road outside your house. He stared down at you, breathing deeply as though trying to calm himself. 

“D?” you asked, reaching up for his face. Your hand passed through his chilly, ghostly cheek, and you withdrew it. 

“Sorry,” he murmured. “I’m tired.”

“It’s alright,” you said. “Come in.” 

Midnight’s earsplitting neigh nearly startled the life from you, and D rounded on her with a growl. “That was not polite,” he said, stepping into her space and forcing her to take a chastened step back. As if she’d spoken to him, he countered hotly, “I don’t care if you do want a carrot, you wilful mare! You’ll get fat!” 

You had to laugh, and at the sound of it, Midnight’s ears pricked up and she raised her head to look over D’s shoulder. He sighed and turned as well. 

“Don’t encourage her, please,” he said long-sufferingly. 

“I can’t help it,” you said, clamping a hand over your mouth. “The way you two bicker… it’s hilarious. Wait there, and I’ll get her a small carrot to thank her for the ride.”

Midnight’s soft snort of triumph faded behind D’s answering voice as you opened the door and trotted inside. The bond they shared was undoubtedly very close, and it reassured you to know that he had friends in Ten and Midnight at least, to ease his evident loneliness.

The instant you were inside your dark, empty house, you knew something was different. A cold breeze hit you in the face and your eyes went to the window at the back of the small kitchen area. Where you had definitely closed it earlier, it now stood open, curtains blowing eerily. 

Your heart began to hammer in your throat. You desperately wanted to call out to D, but something - fear or caution - glued your throat and tongue down tightly. A movement in the corner, followed by a rasping voice which wheezed your name set all your adrenaline rushing freely around your body in a colossal wave. 

“Kravik?” you hissed as the goblin stepped into a shaft of moonlight from the open window. “What are you doing here?”

“You’re not alone, are you?” he said in a low voice. 

“No,” you replied honestly. 

He repeated your name, more urgently this time, adding, “Something’s wrong. Wrong with me. I… I can’t remember… I…” 

You went to him, kneeling down before him so that your eyes were on the same level. You took his gnarled, bony shoulders in your hands and tried to reassure him. Goblins were always chilly, but he felt like a block of ice. A very faint blue glow emanated from his black eyes, and his long-fingered hands trembled. 

“I can’t remember,” he croaked. “I… I go to the mines, and then… then I’m home, but I don’t remember how… and… something’s wrong…” he said in a pitiful voice. This was so unlike your best friend. Normally he was jovial and loud, the soul of the party. To hear him so frightened drove home how serious all this was. 

“It’s alright, Krav,” you reassured him gently, taking his shaking fingers in your own. “I know. I’m going to help.” And suddenly you found that didn’t want to tell him too much, in case he really wasn’t himself somehow. “It’s alright.”

The rapid scuff and tread of boots on the front steps made Kravik jump, his tiny, wiry frame going tense. D called your name softly, concerned, and Kravik bolted for the open window like a startled hare, springing lithely through it and scurrying off through the trees. 

When D entered the room, he crossed it in three strides and scooped you up under the arm. “What’s wrong?” he asked, his face bright with concern. “What happened? Who was in here? Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine,” you said, though you felt anything but fine. Kravik’s vagueness had shaken you to the core. You had to get into those mines and get to the bottom of all this. Waiting for Ten was going to be agony. 

“What happened?” he pressed, still with his hand around your arm. 

Heart thudding, you licked your lips. Kravik had been so afraid. He hadn’t wanted to involve anyone else, and yet he had come to you for reassurance. Telling D that he’d been here would garner you nothing at all: you’d learned nothing from his visit, other than that the goblin was afraid, but then again, so were you. If D thought the goblin was putting you in danger by coming to you, he might try and keep Kravik away, or even end up hurting him without meaning to. That thought was more than you could bear, and poor Kravik had been through enough already. 

As you looked up at D, you knew you had to decide whether or not to tell him that Kravik had been here. 

I'll pop the poll up later today, once you've had the chance to read this. I'll post it to Tumblr later today as well. I promise that next time you'll find out Ten's true name, and that answers will be found! 

Hope you enjoyed Part Six - it was 4530 words in the end, which pushes this story's total to a whopping 17, 607! Don't forget to drop a like and/or comment, and if you're shy or would prefer, you can always leave me an anon on Tumblr. Your comments on my other stories/posts bring me such joy, I cannot even begin to express it, so thank you.