* The next time an icon day comes around, someone remind me I need a good icon of some sort for Fairy Town?
* Written to flofx‘s commissioned prompt: A continuation of Old Stories and old Fates.
* Fairy Town has a landing page here..

There were things those people in their tainted church would never say. There were things that no-one in this tainted town would even whisper, not even Bishop MacNamilla. There were things that you didn’t even think.

And one of those things was this: there were fairies and fairies. There were the things that looked like people, that you called “fairies,” or didn’t really even call that so much as shape the label around the space they filled. They went to work with you, if you were a lay person. They owned houses and shopped and, to a casual tourist, looked human. But they were a little strange, a little eccentric, a little tainted.

And then there were the demons that were actually fairies, the spirits and sprites, goblins and boggarts, monsters and mice, and they hid in the wild spaces, lurked around the gateways, lingered anywhere there were too many of the first sort, anywhere there was belief, anywhere the god had touched.

This altar, the place where it was said the god had Lain His Hand, was so thick with fairies it was a wonder the Bishop could move at all.

And every single one of them had heard of him. Is this the one that killed us? Is this the one that shed the blood?

Fairies, true fairies, had ways of knowing who you were that didn’t rely on faces or fingerprints or skin that was once smooth and now was sagging. Fairies, the real ones, it was said, knew your souls.

Bishop MacNamilla figured that was probably true. Most demons would, wouldn’t they?

He stood, his feet spread and his arms loose at his sides. So he had stood, once, explaining to the elders what needed to happen. So he had stood, over the graves of the demons, over the graves of the fairies, his hands soaked with their blood. So he had stood, when he had been weak.

He had let the children go, the spawn. He had let some of the females go, too. And the final nail in their coffin, the living victim – he had not been able to do that, either. He had been weak.

And now he was far, far weaker in body – and far, far stronger in will. He straightened his spine and looked at them, the demons deep in this holy place.

Is he the one? Is this the spirit-killer? Is this the Unholy Thing? Their voices buzzed around him. Their hands brushed over him, leaving places that were too hot or too cold. Their noses sniffed at him, rubbing their scent over him in turn. They couldn’t let it stand. They couldn’t let him live, not after what he’d done.

He was ready for it. Bishop MacNamilla raised his chin and looked them in as much of eyes as any of them had. They would kill him, of course. And his blood would spill over the god-stone. And then the world would shudder and the old magic, the old divinity, would awaken, and all this taint would be cleansed from the world.

His vision was blurring. The Bishop realized with some alarm that he was having trouble breathing. He was seeing spots. He was…

He slumped to the ground in front of the god-stone, his blood unspilled.

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