Every now and then a question pops up about why the horses RCSI couriers ride into Fey can return safely to the mortal world. Since horses in the Code Name: Hunter / A Year and a Day world are not considered fully sentient, explaining to a horse that it can’t eat the grass or drink the water won’t work. A horse is hungry, so it eats. It is thirsty, so it drinks. Why then can they return to the mortal world when other characters can’t?
I’m going to try to go over this without getting into too much detail since there’s a risk of giving future points away. Hopefully this will help with some of the confusion.
We’ve talked in the past about the nature of essence - the depth of will-power, personal strength, conviction, love, faith, and fortitude - that determines how much magic a person can create. The higher the level of essence a person possesses, the more magic they can generate. The lower, the less. Every sentient being in the CN:H / AYAD world creates magic. Beings that are considered too low on the sentient scale - creatures like Part (the horse Max rides into Fey), for example - create so little magic that they can consume Fey food and move in and out of the gates with no effects beyond a mild bit of indigestion. At the end of his adventure, Part will be a little gassier than normal for a bit, but that’s all.
So why is this? Simple. What prevents mortals from leaving is the magic of the Fey realm mixing with the mortal’s essence. Fey magic is more aggressive, for lack of a better word, than mortal magic. It tends to wind into a person, seeking out that person’s essence and binding itself to it. Once the Fey magic has become intertwined with the mortal’s essence, the two cannot be separated. The mortal is claimed by Fey and can’t return home. At this point, RCSI hasn’t dedicated much time to discovering workarounds to this beyond the throwing out of random ideas - such as a Fey-locked agent carrying a sack of dirt from the Fey realm with them as they try to walk through a gate. The main reason for this lack of research comes down to a combination of other, more pressing issues and… a general lack of volunteers willing to act as guinea pigs.
This binding between Fey magic and a mortal’s essence happens gradually over a day, becoming fully complete within twenty-four hours. If a mortal consumes Fey food or drink, the binding happens instantaneously.
Creatures like Part produce such a minute amount of magic, that any binding which occurs is at so minuscule a level it causes no effects on the organism beyond the slight bellyache and the gassiness previously mentioned.
Does this work the opposite way on the Fey? Yes it does. Fey who spend extended periods of time in the mortal world will eventually find themselves unable to travel back into Fey. Fortunately for the Fey, it takes much longer for the less aggressive mortal magic to intertwine itself completely with a Fey’s essence. As a result, while it takes only twenty-four hours to trap a mortal in Fey, it takes multiple years to trap a Fey in the mortal realm. Fey can also consume mortal food with little fear, as long as they do so in moderation. Most Fey are aware of this danger and don’t linger in the mortal world for long periods of time. The ones that do have decided to make their home in the mortal realm permanently.
Unfortunately, the aggressiveness of Fey magic has an even darker side for mortals. Fey magic can continue to work on a mortal long after that person has left the Fey realm or the Fey who threw the attack has vacated the area. We saw a hint of this back in Issue 1 of the first version of AYAD with Allen’s hand.
Even though Jack was back in the Fey realm and hours had passed, Allen was still feeling the effects of Jack’s magic. Moraine had to physically remove Jack’s residue magic from Allen’s hand to prevent it from doing Allen any further harm.
The longer Fey magic remains in a person, the more damage it can do. Simply getting out of the Fey realm in time without having eaten or drunk anything may not be enough if the concentration of Fey magical residue is too high.
Some in RCSI believe high concentrations of Fey magical residue is the cause behind cases of people dying due to spontaneous combustion, though no clear consensus has been made at this time.
