We took the roads to Bayou Pigeon as far as they would carry us. We then hit the edge of the swamp at a boat rental shop. We broke into the place easily enough and (ahem) appropriated one of the large boats that would accommodate all of us. In the interest of being as stealthy as possible, we decided not to turn the engine on. Nate was holding Gunnar's axe...I don't pretend to know how it works, other than it can sometimes work like a sonar listening in on a homing beacon when searching for divine objects--or something. Like I said, I'm a little fuzzy on the details, but we use it like that from time to time. I decided to activate my boon, Wind's Freedom, and fly alongside the boat.
Any stealth gained by keeping the engine quiet was, in all likelihood negated by all the cursing and grunting of my companions struggling to keep the boat going forward and in a relatively straight line, or turning as necessary to follow the signal picked up by Gunnar's axe. Like a drunken Irishman with three sheets to the wind, we stumbled and lumbered forward to our goal in the thick and humid night of the Louisiana swampland. Eventually dawn began to break over the swamp and Nate could tell...somehow...that we were much nearer to our goal. We were determined to save Luc and the key (i.e. his ring), to grab them before Caleb got the key and killed Luc.
As dawn broke, we saw off in the distance a lone tree house a few yards up in the air, probably with a boat tied round back. This had to be it, had to be where Luc was holed up. Caleb was nowhere to be seen. We were all filled with excitement and anticipation--had we finally gotten the jump on that big blonde bastard??
Suddenly, a big Louisiana gator came flying through the air and landed, dazed and confused, in a big heap at the back of my companion's boat. More sinisterly, dark forces were moving beneath the water, only these weren't gators, but some kind of mythic fish-man, attacking en masse. I saw Jack dive into the muck to fight one, while others began to tear at the boat's hull, and I could see they were soon taking on water. The boat became a scene of mass chaos and splashing and blood, as I floated serenely above the water. I looked towards the open passage of the treehouse, where our goal lay, and the confused mess behind me. Obviously whomever was responsible for the Loa fish-men, and the mysteriously thrown gator, they were seeking to keep us from our goal. But so far the fish-men had ignored me, hadn't attacked me, hadn't taken notice of me. I could dive in and duke it out with them, but then Caleb might seize the key while we were busy fighting...
I looked at my friends again...Gunnar had just sliced through one of the fish men, and Jack seemed to be holding his own, while Camilla was drawing a bead on the gator with that huge sniper rifle of hers...
I knew they wouldn't understand, but I also trusted my friends and knew that they could handle this without me. We had to get that goddamn key, had to get it NOW. Gators just don't fly through the air on their own, and I had an inkling why this one had achieved its airborne status. I charged ahead, leaving the watery chaos behind me, my eyes focused on the tree house.
I crossed the threshold of the tree house and saw a surprisingly young African American male in his late 20s or early 30s seated in the middle of the room, chanting and in a meditative, almost trance-like state.
I greeted him in my best French..."Monsieur Luc Francoeur?"
There was no reply. The young man did not even look at me, or even open his eyes, or otherwise acknowledge my presence.
I noticed a dark shape in the corner but couldn't make it out. I decided the young man seated was probably not Luc, and circled around him, making my way to the dark shape at the back of the room.
Here I found a sickly, elderly black man on a cot, in his bedclothes and under bedsheets but clearly struggling against the chills of an illness.
I repeated my greeting in French.
He looked up weakly, having trouble focusing on my face. "Who are you?" he said.
I explained my name was Brendan, that I was a friend of Odette, and I was here to help.
"Odette? Where she at?" the old man cried.
"Monsieur Francoeur," I continued, "...this is very important...do you still have the ring given to you by Margaret Haughery in your childhood?"
"How you know about dat?" he spat in English, then calling to the young man behind me, telling him to get over there. The young man ignored him as he had ignored me.
"Sil vous plait, Monsieur Francoeur, you are in grave danger...I have to get you out of here, we have to keep the ring away from..."
Suddenly a huge pair of familiar Fomorian feet came crashing through the roof of this tiny hovel, and the bright dawn light spewed in unwelcome. Caleb looked down from on high with a look of satisfaction, not even acknowledging my presence or regarding me as any kind of threat.
"...him", I finished my sentence uselessly.
FUCK FUCK FUCK, my mind raced...as time seemed to slip into slow motion...
I bucked up my courage best I could and seeking to distract Caleb, raised my right hand in a exaggerated mock salute, and bellowed up at him...
"TOP OF THE MORNING TO YE, YE FECKIN' UGLY FOMOIRE
GOBSHITE!!"
There was no way I could inflict any meaningful damage with Gae Bolga on Caleb all alone like this.
In a fluid motion I reached down and scooped up Luc's frail body in my arms, turned 180 degrees and bolted toward the open doorway. I activated my Wind's Freedom boon upon crossing the threshold and kept running on air out past the open passageway, flying out over the swampland.
If this scene had had a soundtrack, it would be any number of mournful Irish tunes on the uilleann pipes, wailing like a banshee.
It was not enough. Caleb took one lunging step foward and brought down his terrible, gigantic obsidian Katana squarely on the midsection of my body. The last sight I remember was the inscription written in Ogham script on the blade, which I screamed out in Old Irish...hoping my companions would hear. My life flashed before me as the blade tore into my flesh. Oh, Aisling, I'm so sorry...I hope Laurel remembers to recover you and transport you safely back to Ireland...the last thing I felt was the Katana's blade smacking hard against my spine and bruising my rib cage...I could feel Luc go flying out of my arms and heard him splash into the water less than a second before I must have hit, but it seemed like more than a few seconds.
A seeming eternity of darkness followed. Through a sheer force of will my wounds began to close...my body, which had nearly been torn in half...reconnected itself...still bruised and battered, naturally, but...
The next thing I felt was another sharp pain in my chest, and then my consciousness floating up as if from the depths of a great lake. Adrenaline injection, forcefully delivered, to prevent cardiac arrest, most likely.
"YOU STUPID FUCKING MICK!! IDIOT! IDIOT IDIOT!!!!" ... Laurel's screams were muffled at first, then became more audible and clear.
I tried to focus on Laurel's face...her hair a beautiful, watery mess, tears streaming down her face twisted and contorted by anger, concern, fear, and a thousand other emotions they don't have names for yet.
Still delirious, I managed to mumble "we have to stop meeting like this..."; I laughed involuntarily but the pain cut my laugh short and I started to black out again.
Ignoring little my joke, Laurel kept screaming "OH NO YOU DON'T! NOT TODAY GODSDAMMIT." as she kept working on me furiously, keeping me from going into shock.
I looked over and saw Luc was still alive, propped up against the same tree root as me. "Worth it", I mumbled to myself.
I think Jack and Gunnar made makeshift rafts and floated Luc and I out of the swamp...somehow. I later learned that Luc had been suffering from Cholera, which Laurel fixed. It turns out Luc's young associate had been in league with Caleb, somehow, but Caleb had just been using him and now the young man was dead. Luc was a treasure trove of information, and he was most grateful to us for saving him. He planned to return to New Orleans proper to live out his final days.
Thanks to Laurel's skills as a doctor, and thanks to some of my own self-healing abilities, plus the last-minute crappy itinerary we booked for getting ourselves back to Ireland, I was able to sleep on the flight and find myself good as new upon touching down in old Dublin town a few days later.
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