Beyond the Gateway (Cranksepticeye)

Thirty-five

Auberon placed a hand on Jack's head and whispered a word. Suddenly it was like the song of Jack's power went from a tune played on a pennywhistle to a full-blown orchestral score. He lit up the park.
Then, jsut as suddenly, there was silence. Darkness.
Jack fell to his knees, hollow and empty. Too empty even to weep.
His father stood before him, his icy skin glowing with Jack's light and his eyes filled with a warmth that had been absent prior to that moment. The brightness faded: his eyes grew dark again.
"Okay," Jack said finally, his voice flat, muted. "How do I stop them?"
The king looked down on him, once more distant as a marble statue. "I cannot tell you how. But I have given you the means by which you might accomplish the task. The rest, you'll just have to figure out for yourself."
"What?"
"Good luck, child." Auberon turned to go.
Jack was seething. "You're a real son of a bitch. You know that?"
"I can be," Auberon said, as he looked at Jack with something like regret in his eyes. "Unfortunately, you are as well. Remember that."
He touched Jack's cheek, and then spun on his heel and stalked into the night, turning himself into a falcon as he went. Wings spread wide, the king flew away with Mabh's war horn clutched in his taloned grasp.
Not knowing what else to do, Jack turned back to Bob, where he lay upon the ground, limp and unmoving. The charm may have kept the boucca from further hurt, but he was still desperately injured.
"Bob . . . " He shook him until he groaned. "Bob - Puck! Wake up! The Hunt. They're awake and they're hunting humans."
Above him now, he could see the Hunt. They plunged and one of the Faerie hunters chased down a woman dressed in a torn and bloodied Cleopatra costume. Plucking her from the ground to drag her through the air by her feet. "They're hurting them!"
"Aye." Bob said, sounding a bit delirious. "Don't worry - they're just playing. They'll get around to killing them soon enough."
"I'd like to avoid that eventually if possible, Bob. What do I do?"
"You must reach Ethan. You're the only one who can."
"He's two hundred feet in the air!"
Bob giggled .a bid and his head lolled back. "You're a Faerie. Use your wings . . . "
"Auberon took them!" Jack almost screamed with frustration.
"Oh . . . " His voice was reduced to a whisper as his strength ebbed. "Then you must find another way. You have a lot of power. . . . "
"Had, Bob."
"Still . . . do. . . . "
"What are you talking about?" he pleaded desperately. "Auberon took it from me; I gave it back!"
"Thou marvell'st at my words?" the boucca gasped, his eyes closing.
"No - Bob! - no more Shakespeare!" Jack shook him again, trying to jar him out of the poetic lapse. Now was not the time.
"But hold thee still," he murmured, those same cryptic lines he'd used to warn Jack in the dressing room. "Things bad begun to make strong themselves by ill. . . . "
Then Bob the boucca passed out from pain.

Ethan, where are you when I need you?
It was a stupid question. All Jack had to do was look into the sky and see him blazing across the treetops like a comet, the band of killer Fae hot on his heels as they pursued screaming humans about the park.
Jack turned inward, searching for an answer. When he closed his eyes, he found himself once more in the vision he'd had in rehearsal so long ago, a place he how recognized as Herne's forest - in the spring glade where Mabh had enchanted the kelpie. In his mind he looked across the clearing and saw Ethan standing once again in the shadows of the woods. He smiled at Jack, that sad curving of his beautiful lips, and lifted his hands, palms wide. The white branches of the birch trees at his back glowed dimly in the light that shone from Ethan's hands, arching over his head like the antlers of a stag.
The white King Stag. . . .
That was it.
Jack's eyes snapped open, and he gasped at the revelation. The Faerie king could take away his power from Jack's blood . . . but Jack was willing to bet that he couldn't take away Mabh's. Mabh, the Autumn Queen, who ruled the Borderlands. She, who hand created the Wild Hunt in the first place, who'd twisted the Faerie hunters, stolen away and hidden their prey . . .
Mabh, Queen of Air and Darkness, his mother.
Auberon had told him not to forget that, but he'd shied away from the fact.
Bob had told him too. Things bad begun to make strong themselves by ill.
Fight fire with fire. That was what they had been trying to tell him.
Ignoring the best he could the chaos all around him, Jack closed his eyes again and searched even deeper inside of himself - looking for the dark, dangerous spark of his mother's power.
There.
He touched something in his mind: twisting, serpentine energy. It was buried so deep that he never would have found it if Auberon hadn't taken away the blinding brilliance of his Unseelie gift. Jack's mind recoiled from that initial touch, even though he knew he was going to have to use that dark gift. Draw upon it. Em brave it.
He clenched his fists and, concentrating fiercely, reached again. The power of Mabh's shadowy throne wrapped around him, suffocating, overwhelming. He was drowning again, just like the night he'd rescued Lucky. Until suddenly, like a key turning a lock, something clicked. A door opened inside him, and Jack was flooded with straighten and fury. Mabh's power coursed through his veins like acid. He was deathly cold and on fire at the same time.
Stretching out his hands before him, Jack tore through the veil between worlds as if it were filmy silk, opening a rift right into the heart of Queen Mabh's realm.
Without giving himself a chance to think about it, he threw himself into the abyss.