Story: Ban-Sidhe - Family Ties, Pt.1 History
By
Ban_Sidhe,
Posted on: 2007-08-02 20:14 in Multi-Media Fan Creations
Hey Ban-Sidhe,
Liked this story very much. I don't normally read through something this long at work! But you had me through-out! Is very nice piece linking into the comic, which I remembered from before.
One minor thing that came to mind on the ending though, was hasn't she just put her parents in danger with the strong display of powers right next to/inside the hospital!??
hmmmm.....niggly thing! so feel free to ignore me 
as liked the ending regardless.
:P
You're right of course, but rage is blind and she's a little upset at the end of that. I'm sure the hospital has had worse, and I'm sure that all medical facilities (Even in the Rogue Isles) adhere to correct building codes and regulations concerning large ground movements. 
Union: @Ban-Sidhe
True. And no worse perhaps then recent ground swells caused by Rikti drop ships. Nice to see our Paragon facilities built to last 
Family ties
Part 1. History
Family, love them or hate them you have to live with them.
Family; Brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles and cousins theyll be hovering there on the outskirts watching how youre doing.
Sometimes theyre there to pick you up, sometimes they dont notice and sometimes they just watch on with a faintly amused smile upon their face as you pick yourself up out of the stinking mud.
When it all comes down to it, family is all you have left sometimes. It was all that Alice had left after three thousand years of her punishment...
The Sidhe were ancient, powerful and gone. They watched the strange apes stumble out onto the African plains with their sticks and the spark of intelligence that would drive them on. To the Sidhe evolution was growing up, and they watched the apes as they tottered through the savannah on two legs. Barely able to control their forwards fall as they twisted their four-legged skeletons into one that would support two legs.
The Sidhe could remember their past, as they watched these babes peer out from the safety of the forests. The Gods had built them to stand upright from the beginning. Adamastrian and Everistriniis were the first. Tall, the apes that would be, would eventually build legends around them. They would be called the Fairy folk, elves, the peaceful people of the hills; and that they were not to be trusted. The apes soon learnt that to enter a fairy circle did not necessarily mean that they were ever to leave it, or to leave it soon after they entered.
The spirit Gods of the banished Pantheon tried to take the world for their own, and the Sidhe were there to stop them. Placed there by the deities who had created the Universe itself, the Sidhe fought the children of the ancient gods with the powers of reality itself. Masters of space-time they twisted the Universe itself to push the evil back. The first war left scars in the landscape that never truly healed and would become known as fairy circles, and those mysterious triangles where the apes would disappear. The war had also hurt the Sidhe. Soon, they came to realise that they were not the ones who would carry on the fight, and that the animals that were dragging themselves up out of the mud, the ones that would call themselves human, were their successors.
With understanding came action, and so the Sidhe accelerated the human evolution by attaching themselves to splinter families within the human tribes. They also built cities, the greatest being the one the humans came to call Atlantis; the city that would live on, in human legend, as a testament to the downfall of the Sidhe. The gateway city, the concentric rings had been designed to channel the energies of the Sidhe. Of course the pantheon broke through the wards the Sidhe had built into the walls of reality, but the trap had been set. The second war cost the Sidhe, and the humans, dearly. Atlantis was destroyed as the ancient god MohOg tore a hole in the weakest point between the Universes, something the Sidhe had gambled correctly on as they had built Atlantis directly over the very same location.
The destruction was total, and complete, as Atlantis dissolved into the ocean. Its atomic cohesion failing as all of its energy was poured by the Sidhe into the dimension of the pantheon. And yet the pantheon had an alternative plan; to infiltrate the humans, and spread their spirit-seed amongst their population. The future would belong to them eventually; all they had to do was wait...
Aliciatriana was one of the Sidhe that took the situation into her own hands, and she dealt death to those infected by the pantheon. Including those amongst her, human, family. She treated the seeded as an infection to be burnt and sterilised from the earth; something to be despised, and destroyed utterly.
The spirits of the ancient gods were pushed back once more, but now the Sidhe had to deal with the atrocities that had been committed against the humans that had been infected with the spirit seed of the banished. For her crimes against humanity, Aliciatriana was sentenced to have her soul stripped from her, and smashed into a thousand soul-shards to be distributed amongst the humans. As each died of natural causes, the shard the human was carrying could be collected. If the human was to die of anything else, the shard could not be collected and she would never be whole again. Each shard would also break up between the children, and so one shard became two, became seven, became more....
And so Aliciatriana was bound to her family. Her broken soul could only be healed by defending the humans she had originally sworn to shield, and had betrayed in the war. She wept as each of her children passed on into the great unknown. And as she wept for her family, they came to know her as Alice; the fairy that came to take them away after their lives had been spent. She was the Ban-Sidhe that followed them throughout history, protecting their souls from the devil as she escorted them into the next world.
3000 years and four members of the original blood-line remained. One had cancer, two were dying of old age and one placed herself in front of a group of wailer demons. Aliciatriana had no choice, and acted, lest she see one of the last soul-shards destroyed forever and with it her chance for redemption (See Mini-Comic Wail of the Ban-Sidhe: Comic Link )
*****
Jessica OBrien opened squinted between her eyes and peered at the red L.E.D.s of the clock next to her bed. Elsewhere in the flat, the insistent ring, ring, of the phone destroyed the quiet gloom. She stuck her feet out into the cold, hearing a disgruntled Meow from the foot of the bed where Hicks, the cat, had been sleeping.
This had better be good. You do know what time it is, dont you?
Miss OBrien? This is Harper General hospital. I, can you come in please?
What? Whats going on? Is Charles Ok?
Miss OBrien, theres been an... Incident.
Ill be right there, have you notified my Father and Mother?
Im very sorry Miss OBrien, but this involves both.
Jessica dropped the phone back into the cradle, and rushed to pull on some clothes. Hicks mewed his annoyance again when she turned on the light in the bedroom. He slunk under the bed, and gave her a malicious look as she pulled on a pair of jeans.
*****
The hospital was crawling with spider soldiers when she got there. She rushed in, through the revolving doors, and up to the desk. Around her cleanup crews were sweeping away dust and debris, while some of the soldiers were helping deal with some of the larger lumps of concrete and twisted steel.
What happened? The desk-clerk glowered at her.
The Circle of Thorns came by and took some of the patients.
I was called... The desk clerks angry face softened.
Are you Miss OBrien? Jessica nodded. Francine! Take Miss OBrien up to ward 5! She suddenly shouted. A student nurse appeared at Jessicas side.
Come with me please...
Moments later Jessica found herself in a small white room. Machines quietly hissed and beeped in time with her parents heart beats. Daniel OBriens eye flickered open and squinted at his daughter.
Jessy? Oh God Jessy, I tried. I tried and they came...
Shh... What happened dad?
They came *cough* I was trying to save your brother, and your mother tried to stop them at the door.
Whoah! Start again dad. Slowly; from the beginning.
I found a book. Magic. It can save your brother from the cancer.
Ok. Did you steal it? Jessicas father looked pained.
No! I found it in a second-hand bookstore. When I found out what it could do... I brought it here. I tried to save David from the cancer. I tried to save your brother... He looked at her. I know what youve been doing Jessy. I know how youve been getting the money to pay for Davids medical bills. Its why Ive kept quiet. I know you love your brother, and that youve been doing everything you can to save him. Jessica looked away, and looked back as her fathers hand wrapped itself around her wrist. I know what youve become Jessy. Youre not evil, and neither is the thing within you. The power you have... If we lived in Paragon it would be so different, but we dont. I know you understand the fine line between right and wrong that youre walking... Look at me girl. Jessica looked her father in the eye, as a tear slowly made its way down her face. The circle stepped over the line long ago. They took David, and theyre going to sacrifice him. The strong grip pulled her closer. Get my son back Jessy. Get your brother back, and dont let anyone get in your way. His eyes rolled up as he lost consciousness.
Ill get him back dad. If its the last thing I do. She gently kissed him on the forehead, and then did the same to her mother. Ill be back soon mum; dad. She looked back at her father, and walked out of the room.
*****
A spider soldier grabbed her by the shoulder as she tried to leave the foyer.
Where are you going little girl? We need statements from everyone who leaves the hospital. Jessica looked at the armoured glove that gripped her shoulder. To anyone else it would have been crushingly painful, but all Jessica could feel right now was rage. Her gaze travelled up the huge soldiers arm.
Let go. She whispered.
Insolent [censored]; youre coming with me! Jessica felt the power rise within her. This was different, unbridled, it felt like standing inside a giant wave; right in the tube where there was nothing but the roar... The sound emerged from her throat, her body ringing with it. Around her the concrete floor rippled and bucked like a raging bull throwing everyone in the foyer around like rag dolls. The soldier tried to hit her, but her second reaction was just as devastating as the first. The front of the hospital exploded in a shower of painful glass slivers; through it, the soldier was flung. Across the street, he hit the opposite wall and collapsed in a heap. Blood leaked from between the gaps in the corpses armour.
The Ban-Sidhe walked through the wrecked hospital front and leapt into the sky. Today would be a bad day for the cult known as the circle of thorns. Behind her the miniature earthquake continued to shatter windows, and force people to hold onto the flexing ground for dear life.
Union: @Ban-Sidhe