The Fifth Beast (ManxMan Chinese/Celtic Fantasy Story)

Chapter 1

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Foreword

Irish names are difficult, they are pronounced completely differently in Old Irish, Contemporary Irish, in English and Russian translations. Please remember that in Irish CH is KH: Nechtan (like Michael), Sencha - it's not like sencha tea, it's Sen-kha. Then again, the Kirinches (a barbarian race a little like the Mongols after their invasion of China) reads like 'inches', because it's not an Irish word. Also С in Irish is always K - Cumal, Mac, Curoi.

I borrowed the names and the race of the Tuatha Dé Danann from Irish myths, but with major changes. I gave them more magical power than they had initially, and banished them from Ireland to a new world of my making. This is basically a love story between a powerful, but rather young and inexperienced lord of the Tuatha Dé Danann (which is immortal, of course) and a strong barbarian warlord, which is  mortal and four times younger than the main character (but he is very capable and very assertive, to put it mildly). There will be some dubious consent issues and some infidelity issues, lots of hot steaming sex, mysteries to solve, demons to fight, and I know full well that almost no one likes to read a WIP. But I see everywhere on Wattpad how people read and support English translations of Chinese BL novels for  years. My novel is also like a Chinese BL, but with more sex, more emotions and less blood and gore :)

I will post a new chapter after receiving at least 10 votes on the previous one. Asking for comments is too much, but feel free to comment anything with a smilie or a single word - I like to see emotions of the readers.

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The frosted leaves looked like silver. The freshly fallen snow sparkled with diamonds. However, the coagulated blood looked nothing like rubies. Bloodstones, maybe? Or black agate?

The picture was not devoid of wild, exotic beauty. If Niall were an artist, he would have considered painting it.

He wondered how fast the snow would melt. Niall rarely saw it. There was, of course, an ice house in his castle Sliabh Mis. At royal feasts at Emain Maсha, snow was sometimes served on silver platters as refreshment for guests. But never in such quantities. The forest clearing was thirty paces long, and almost half of it was covered with snow.

Of course, he saw paintings, frescoes and tapestries. He knew what mountain glaciers and snow caps looked like. He knew the concept of winter, although winter came only to the lands of the Kirinches. The lifeless white landscapes of the barbaric North almost perceptibly breathed cold. But these were pictures from the other side of the Shield. Now it was lying on this side of the Shield, on the green grass of Cruithne Corann, in the blessed realm of Mag Tuired, which had never had seen a single winter since its founding a thousand years ago. Snow was a far more sinister sign than a torn body. After all, Niall had seen plenty of dead humans, and many of them had suffered a longer and crueler death than the man in the clearing.

The dead man's face was distorted with fear, his mouth frozen in a silent scream. The attack had been fast and brutal. The hunter died almost instantly, slashed by giant claws. Clearly, he had managed to see his attacker, and the sight made him so frightened, that he simply froze and didn't reach for the bow on his shoulder, for his knife. There was no time for that? Or did he think his weapons useless?

In the clearing there were footprints of the hunter himself and the beast's tracks which seemed very similar to a bear's. The tracks and footprints were lightly powdered with snow. It had been snowing for some time after the attack.

Niall saw the falling of snow once. Elatha Mac Lir, Lord of Water, held a demonstration in the Queen's garden. But his snowflakes melted before touching the flowers and plants. Niall threw his head back and looked up. Had the snow been falling naturally, from the sky, it would have covered the tree branches that were almost touching over the clearing. It would have also spread more evenly, not as this elongated patch. And wouldn't it have started to melt already?