Cailleach ripped through the dimensions fueled by fury at the bastard king who tried to kill the man she loved. He would continue to pursue her through time and space. The sick obsession he held for her would never end.

Arawn didn’t fight her. He relished the feel of her body as they sailed through the cosmos and moved through every dimension. He grabbed her by the waist. Her fingers dug further into the sides of his neck in response. His eyes rolled to the back of his head. It lit a fire in his groin that he longed for her to quench. Her eyes burned with ice-blue phosphorescence that charged his blood. He wanted her to show him her power. He wanted to see it, know it, and all of her. Her ability to traverse the dimensional shifts with ease and speed was remarkable. He pulled her close to him, ran a hand up her arm and into her hair. He wrenched her closer as her hand squeezed tighter, but his pursuit of her lips was relentless. He needed to taste her, feel the heat their kiss could ignite in both of them.

Cailleach felt him move in closer. She put her free hand over his face. She felt his slimy tongue rove over her palm as he kissed and nibbled at it. She jerked it away but could still feel the foul remnants of where his lips had been. He disgusted her. She looked into his eyes, and amusement danced in them. The weasel enjoyed it. She felt his hand splay across the small of her back. The more he tried to close the gap between them, the more she worked to keep them apart. He was a hair’s breadth from her lips when she ripped through the last dimension. She threw him through the rift and into the Milky Way and closed the portal behind them.

They flew apart, and her skin crawled where he’d laid hands on her. He repulsed her on the cellular level.

“My queen, you have the most luscious lips I’ve ever seen,” he said as he slithered toward her.

Cailleach backed away from him and held up a hand. “Stop!”

He shook his head and wagged his finger from side to side. “Now, now I know that’s not what you want, my sweet.”

“Of course, it’s what I want you fool.”

Arawn’s playful expression turned to ice, his brow furrowed, and his eyes narrowed. “Now dearest, I know you don’t mean that.”

“I have never meant anything more in my entire existence. I do not want you, Arawn. Get it through your head, I will not be yours.”

The atmosphere turned to ice around him, “If I can’t have you, no one can goddess! I will rip the heavens apart before I let him have you.” He shed his mortal skin and revealed his pure form, the self only others of his kind could see. His skin glowed and glittered in iridescent hues far beyond the spectrum of light humans can handle. His radiance lit the atmosphere around them. He stretched his long-concealed limbs out across the galaxy and then lounged across Saturn’s rings floating on them like a lazy river.

“It’s not your choice to make.”

“No, it’s yours. Me or him.”

“Simple. Him, you seem to have trouble taking the hint.”

“Darling, why must you make things so difficult? You seem to think it’s so easy to reject me. I’ll go back for him when I’m done here, and I’ll kill him.”

“No, you won’t.”

“Oh, I’ll do better than that, I’ll kill his entire line, completely snuff them all out of existence.” One side of Arawn’s lip lifted confidently. “Once you’ve watched me kill the inferior minions, you’ll change your mind. You either live with me, or they don’t live.”

Arawn stammered over his words as Cailleach shed her mortal form and revealed the universe’s essence in her being. Every vein pulsed with primeval force. Her skin radiated in silvery titanium white so bright she illuminated the heavens like a second sun.

He lifted his hand to shield his eyes to her true form. The light was so bright he felt the urge to turn away but kept his eyes locked on her. He recoiled from the power she emanated. For the slightest moment, he cowered as she revealed the true nature of her existence for the first time in eons. He corrected himself but not fast enough. She saw his uncertainty and fear.

Arawn tried to recover, “I don’t want to destroy you.” He crossed his arms and cocked his head to the side. “My darling, look at you in all your glory. Why have you hidden this from the world? You’re gorgeous, and that mortal will never be able to see you the way I can. It would be a pity to destroy such beauty.”

Cailleach’s lip rose on one side of her mouth as she cocked an eyebrow, “You think you can destroy me?” Cailleach’s ice-blue eyes glowed. Her voice magnified in a triune echo, “I am age itself, the beginning of all, the beginning of time. I am the creator and the destroyer of worlds. The cosmic soup of creation forged from my universal cauldron. I am the essential energy upon which polarity and duality stand. You have no idea the powers you’re messing with hollow king.”

Arawn still ached for her to show him all her power. His arrogance and conceit got the better of him. “Then show me, great goddess, do your worst,” his words dripped with sarcasm, and he laughed at her as he charged.

They fought with the forces of heaven, earth, and all the otherworldly realms. Her body jolted with an untapped rage that boiled inside her. She threw everything she had at him. She slashed at him with cosmic force, he slashed back. Their blood splattered the heavens around them. She manipulated the elements to do her bidding, but he countered them all. Yet, neither let up, both determined to have their way. They tore at each other, through each other, their powers matched hit for hit, blow for blow.

Arawn got hold of her and wrapped his immense arm around her neck and dug a finger into her side like a knife’s blade.

“Aaaahhhhhh,” the shard pierced her insides. He twisted his hand and slid the shard further in. She screamed again.

He uncoiled his arm from her neck, grabbed a fistful of hair, and yanked it back. He inhaled her scent and rubbed his nose down the side of her face. The tip of his tongue slid up her jawline and carved a line to her ear. Her body stiffened against him. His chest rumbled low and harsh. “Oh my powerful queen, don’t feel too bad. You put up a good fight,” his eyes narrowed, and his grip tightened in her hair, “but this ends now.”

“What ends?” She asked.

“Don’t be stupid, you know damn well what I’m talking about.”

She relaxed her body and melted into him, “You mean the mortal?”

“Of course, the mortal.” Arawn felt her body relax into him, he pushed into her so she could feel his need, his desire for her.

She slipped her hand down the side of her body and placed her hand on his. She tried to pull the shard out, but he dug in deeper.

“Ah, ah, dearest. I need to hear you say it.”

She refused to give Vipoig up, and her body pulsed with radiant heat. The boiling rage inside her tipped the scales, and her body turned into a blazing blue inferno. Her skin sizzled, and sparks flew everywhere. Her fiery tendrils lapped at Arawn’s face, and he retracted the shard from her side. The heat she radiated burned so hot he couldn’t stand it. He struggled to hold onto her, to stay in control, but she blazed like a blue hypergiant. The waves of heat pulsated in rapid succession around him as he withdrew from her before she set him ablaze.

She spun around to face him and worked her magic in the stars. She beckoned this one and that to her bidding as they whirled and mingled with the radiant heat. The stars stretched into bands of light that surrounded the Unseelie king and bound his arms and legs together. She had him.

Arawn raged against his bound limbs and tried to free himself, “Release me, you bitch!”

Cailleach cocked a brow at him. “You’re in no position to be giving orders.”

“No, I won’t be rejected again!” he hissed as he continued to wrestle with his bindings. “Then kill me,” he begged. “ I won’t go through this again, kill me now,” he banked on her ignorance but he continued to underestimate her.

She scoffed at his suggestion. “No. Gods never completely die, you buffoon. Do you believe I’m a greater fool than you? Killing you would be a release and open a door for your return.” She stared him dead in the eyes and said, “I have better plans for you.”

Dread filled Arawn at what she might do, and he fought harder against his restraints, but it was useless. She had him cosmically bound with bands of the solar wind, fire, and stars.

He watched as she swirled the cosmos in her cauldron, “What are you doing?”

Arawn’s voice faded into the background as she plucked Saturn’s rings, grabbed essence from Jupiter’s red-eye, a dash of black hole, and a pinch of the Milky Way. She tossed each of the singular celestial forces into her cauldron. For the last ingredient, she harnessed a solar flare from the sun. Once the cosmic concoction was complete, she flew over to her bound prisoner, forced the brew down his throat, and chanted in that mystical triune voice once again.

“I banish you, wretched King of the Unseelie,

I banish you from the mortal realm, the otherworld, and all realms between,

I banish you to Dubnos, you, and your Unseelie horde,

No more shall you rip the veil of my domain,

So it is, so it was, so it shall ever be,

So mote it be.”

Arawn gnashed his teeth and slashed at his bindings to no avail. “You bitch!” he roared at her, but as the last word of the spell was spoken, he faded away into nothing, banished to the underworld. Confident the Unseelie king was gone for good, she made her way to the mortal realm and to her mortal love.

To be continued…