Exton

Titania rises with inhuman grace from where she kneels by the child. Whatever blessing she gave, it was too soft to hear, unless maybe those pointy ears are good for something besides just looking weird. Nick might have heard it, if he's here.

Mab comes forward to take Titania's place, seemingly radiating a dark chill in her wake. She kneels - and there's a soft rush of air, more felt than heard, and a short, stubby arrow embeds itself in the earth maybe a foot away.

In its short flight, it passed within maybe two inches of Ruarc's head.

Mab was crouched over the baby, about to bestow her blessing, and unaware till just that moment of what was going on. When she sees the missile, she looks up and back, her eyes wide and wild, flaring with rage and dark magic.

"You dare?!!!" It's more than a scream. Nearly everyone present claps hands to their ears against the inhuman shriek, a sound like nothing I've ever heard before; and I pray by all the Powers That Be never to hear such again.

It comes from the dark Queen, the Queen of Air and Darkness, from Mab of the Unseelie. It's insane rage incarnate. Mab rises howling into the air ten, twelve, twenty feet and her voice alone strips the clothes from the would-be assassin. But it doesn't stop there, oh no; it holds him upright in a grip of iron, and it peels the skin from him with exquisite precision, sends it flapping off into the distance; then the muscles are abraded away, as if by an invisible sandblaster. Layer by layer she peels him down to the core, somehow sustaining that banshee scream throughout; now spinning slowly in the air, like a tornado in human form; and when nothing is left but dry bones, she tears the bones apart and sends them spinning to the four corners of the earth. Only then does her spin slow to stillness, and the shriek wanes to silence. She spirals down to settle in her seat as lightly and gracefully as a butterfly. The expression on her face then - dear God, how to describe it? Like the cat that ate the canary, it's a look of pleasure, of satiation, coupled with a terrible, bottomless greed, for more, more! I think suddenly that she would never look this way after the most satisfying sex of her endless life; and I go suddenly cold, and very, very afraid.

She turns to Titania with a gracious smile and says - every inch a queen - "I thank thee, my sister, for this entertaining diversion. Shall we continue?"