The Bridge

*'It was one of the few rooms that he couldn’t alter. Not the location. Not the appearance. It was so old it was virtually a fixed point in time and space.' - Gwyn*

## Introduction

The Bridge is the space shared between the Courts that contained the Old Lore. Davix killed the Old Lore.

## Appears in

Major canon:

*Game Theory*

*The Court of Five Thrones*

## Description

A long time ago, Davix and Olphix destroyed the fire dragons, and trapped the remnants in the Old Lore. Mages believed the Old Lore was too dangerous for normal fae, and so sequestered it in the Bridge, which was only accessible by the monarch(s) of the Seelie and Unseelie Courts. The Bridge is connected to each Court and is, in a sense, part of the Court, but cannot be altered in any way by the monarch in the same way that the monarch can transform almost all of the Court itself: 'It was one of the few rooms that he couldn’t alter. Not the location. Not the appearance. It was so old it was virtually a fixed point in time and space.'

The entrance in the Seelie and Unseelie Court is on the edge of their respective palaces, in a nondescript tree with a wide trunk. To gain entry, a monarch or the monarch-in-waiting places their hand on the trunk, and the bark will open by folding back in upon itself. If anyone else attempted to enter, the energy protecting the entrance would kill them. Even a monarch can feel the invasive energy protection as a discomforting force.

Beyond the entrance is a seemingly bottomless spiral staircase with no lighting leading down 'through a narrow cylindrical dirt shaft' further into the dark, where Gwyn sensed he was going deep underground. The staircases 'smelled of dry dirt, desiccated, with the faint, sweet odour of decay. Eventually the temperature started to warm. Occasionally, set into the dirt, not quite flush with a staircase that had no landings, his hands would brush a circular wooden door, a metal closing, some sort of door handle. He didn’t open any of them. His instincts bristled sharply through him down here. This was a world of wyrms and gods of death and an underworld that he wasn’t comfortable within and wasn’t supposed to be'. The aura of the staircase is one of 'increasing fear and desperation to get out. . . . The closer he came to the Oldest Lore, the more his throat started to close, his gut ached, his bones throbbed. But there, finally, a soft door set into the dirt. It felt like it was made of leather, and Gwyn had no idea what colour it was or what animal it came from. It smelt like no other type of leather he’d ever encountered. He pushed through it into a small, candlelit cavern with dirt walls, dirt ceiling, dirt floor. One the far left, a single chair made of bone, flesh still hanging off it in some places, black and stiff. On the floor a single rug, woven in red, green and yellow to make simple geometric shapes, pleasing to the eye. And on one side, cabinets made of glass, modern make, housing words written on bark, in books, on the leather of animals and fae, on parchment and papyrus.' Gwyn never left fingerprints on the objects there. The room sometimes rippled with heat haze, and leaves those who enter with a feeling of instability.

'The candle flames had been burning at exactly the same level for as long as Gwyn had known of them. That the candles had always been burnt down almost halfway meant that once – perhaps when the room was first constructed – it hadn’t been locked in time as it was now. Once it had been a functioning room. Maybe it hadn’t even been hidden in the underworld where almost no one knew of it and only royalty could enter.' There was a bone chair for someone to sit in.

Gwyn merely had to speak his wish to the Old Lore for them to bring him something that would hopefully help. The Old Lore itself appeared as origami birds that moved of their own accord. Currently, the Old Lore that was in the Bridge is dead, after Davix killed them all. Their blood coated nearly the entire area.

## Trivia

* Baba Yaga can supposedly access the Bridge.

## Image Gallery

Fanart of Gwyn ap Nudd with magical origami/the Old Lore by plintoon https://plintoon-reblogs.tumblr.com/post/69787079074/gwyn-stared-at-the-parchment-again-for-so-long
## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 1.9 *Game Theory*, Chapter 27: Compulsion. Accessed 23 May 2021.
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 *The Court of Five Thrones*, Chapter 37: Explosion. Accessed 23 May 2021.
3. ↑ *The Ice Plague: Book 1 - The Forest of Fire*, Chapter 28: Like Batteries. Accessed 29 April 2021.