Chapter 4

Freed from the distraction of that Faery princess, Dreya could focus on getting her grounds’ defences back under control. That was the theory. In practise, even now they wouldn’t respond, refusing to recognise her authority and stand down.

Moving on to Plan B, it was clear she was going to have to fight them and tear them down for good, this time. She’d beaten the Black Tower’s fortifications in five minutes when she’d just finished her apprenticeship. Given the power and expertise she had gained in the intervening years, she didn’t expect them to pose much of a challenge to her now. She just needed to concentrate. Unfortunately, she hadn’t found that quite so easy, lately.

She tried to call for her elite guards, but there was no response from them, either. It was as if they’d disappeared.

Choosing to go straight to blood magic, she pricked her finger on her dagger, not trusting the flowers in her garden. The pain was minimal, but it did help sharpen her mind. As she did so, some of the plants grew, tendrils snaking out to snare the approaching undead.

“Thanks, Cat,” Dreya smiled. It had bought her a little time.

“Hmmm?” Cat wondered, tearing her gaze away from the stormy sky that was refusing to lighten up. Seeing what Dreya was referring to, she did a double take. “Nothing to do with me,” she admitted.

“Actually, love, it was me,” Jessica spoke up. “Seen you do it enough times, Cat, I thought I’d have a go. Some of our people were supposed to have had nature powers before the dragons took over and the last few days here, I’ve been practising.”

As she spoke, the undead fought free of their restraints and resumed their attack.

“Looks like I need to practice a bit more,” she added, regretfully.

Cat tried the same thing herself. The vines held for longer, but ultimately the result was the same.

“It’s not you, Jess,” she promised, shaking her head. “Something’s resisting my magic. I can’t get the sky to behave, either.”

Giving up, she turned to her fiancée. “Looks like it’s up to you, Dreya.”

The Black robe sorceress drew in her power, channelled it through her blood and unleashed it at the undead, hell hounds and demons that had begun to appear, all the while shielding them all against the wizard magic that assailed them from all sides with increasing power and ferocity. Her shields held, but her offensive spells seemed weakened, somehow. She was keeping the attacks at bay for the moment, but she couldn’t honestly say she was winning. She stepped things up to power words, which helped, but as her magic grew in power, the defences powered up, too.

“I’ve got an idea!” Cat declared, suddenly.

“One of your ridiculous radical ones?” Dreya asked.

The druidess shook her head. “No, it’s a perfectly sensible one.”

“Oh dear, are we that desperate?” the sorceress wondered, worry creeping into her voice.

“I think so, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Dreya sighed, “I suppose we are. Go on, then, what is it?”

“Blanket the place with an anti-magic field. It won’t stop you or me in here, but it might stop that lot out there.”

“Genius as always,” Dreya agreed, and did as her fiancé suggested.

Both were quickly attuned to the magical frequency of the field, so their spellcasting was unaffected, but the attacking magic was unable to penetrate for the moment. Now they needed a way to get on the offensive.

“What about those beam cannon blasts of yours?” Sara spoke up. “Like what Daelen used to use.”

Dreya pulled a face, which Cat silently interpreted as, ‘I think we want to regain our home, not blow it up.’

But Sara’s words had had an effect on the sorceress.

“Beam cannon blasts,” she repeated. “Higher planar energy.”

“What?” Cat asked.

“Reach out and sense it,” Dreya coached. “Analyse the power assailing us.”

Cat did as she asked and realised what her fiancée was getting at.

“The defences are partly powered by higher planar energy. But I don’t recognise the signature. It’s not Daelen’s or Kullos’ or yours.”

As she spoke, she tried to throw up ice walls, using water from the pond, to create choke points, so Sara and Jessica could focus their attacks on the undead and demons with their dragonclaw daggers. Anything to buy time while they figured out what was going on.

“It can’t be another shadow warrior,” Dreya insisted. “There aren’t any.”

Cat agreed, “But who else could know anything about combining higher planar energy with magic and use it against you in your own home?”

They had been paying so much attention to the ground that they hadn’t noticed the continually darkening sky overhead. Cat had given up on trying to control the weather around them. Helping with the trouble on the ground had seemed the priority, but now it was impossible to ignore the unnatural deep darkness.

Dreya glanced up, a worried look growing on her face.

“But this is how the Black Tower looked years ago before I took it.” Something was very wrong here, and Dreya went cold as a theory formed in her mind. “Cat!” she gasped, “I think I know what’s happening!”

Before she could explain further, a colossal figure materialised out of the darkness and towered over them. It was wearing tattered Black robes, which parted just enough to see a skeletal body.

“Congratulations, fools!” it hissed. “You have trespassed in Ulvarius’ lands. You are the first ever to make it this far, and Ulvarius shall reward you. There shall be no release of death for you. Instead, you will serve Ulvarius, becoming part of the Black Tower’s defences. You shall know no rest, nor rescue, for you belong to Ulvarius, now and forever!”

Cat held in her hand a vial of sand, so Nature’s Mirror was standing by, ready to reflect whatever might penetrate the anti-magic field.

Dreya wasn’t scared of Ulvarius’ magic, even with higher planar energy on his side. She had the power to destroy him, but it would require nothing less than what she did when she conquered the Chetsuans’ homeworld, Phitonia. The sorceress really didn’t want to reduce her home to a crater in the ground. Cat may have rebuilt wizards’ towers before, but that was after a careful, controlled reshaping, not total obliteration. Besides, as she’d told her fiancée, she knew what was going on, and this wasn’t really where the problem was. Everything that was happening at the Black Tower was a symptom of a much larger issue. That needed the Guardians. All three of them.

Sara and Jessica were valiantly keeping the attacking undead warriors, demons and other hellspawn creatures off their backs, and a combination of Cat’s druid magic and Dreya’s anti-magic field were blocking the direct magical attacks. That left Dreya herself free to act.

First, she needed to check something, urgently. “Cat, please tell me you’ve got your notebook on you!”

“In my pocket dimension, same as ever.”

“Get it out now. Just in case you can’t access your dimensional magic later.”

“Why wouldn’t I—?” she began, but the sorceress cut her off.

“Trust me.”

“Always,” the druidess agreed and retrieved the book.

As soon as Dreya saw she had it in her hand, she opened a Prismatic Sphere portal and ushered the Chetsuans through it. Before sending Cat through, she asked, “Can Mandalee make her own portals yet?”

“She’s been working on it,” Cat replied.

“Good enough,” Dreya acknowledged and called for the White Guardian, sympathically.

‘Portal. Catriona’s Meadow. Emergency.’

With one final blast of magic to keep everything back from the portal, Dreya followed Catriona through to the other side.

*****

The instant Dreya materialised in the lush, green expanse, she closed the portal. A moment later, another portal flared open – just briefly – then it flickered and died.

Dreya glanced at Catriona and rolled her eyes.

“Give her a chance,” Cat admonished her fiancée. “It took me a few goes at first, too.”

The portal reopened, this time seemingly more stable, and the White Guardian dived out of its mouth, colliding with Dreya and sending them both sprawling to the ground.

“Thanks for breaking my fall,” the assassin offered with a scowl, standing and closing her portal.

“Do that again and that won’t be the only thing that gets broken,” Dreya threatened, also regaining her feet.

“Bring it on, Dreya,” Mandalee replied, refusing to be cowed. “Any time. Now, what the hell have you done?”

“What have I done?” Dreya protested. “What makes you think I’ve done anything?”

“Come on, it’s obvious something’s gone really wrong with Time, so I’m guessing it was either you or Cat and I’d rather blame you!”

“Is this how it’s going to be, then?” Dreya asked, indignantly. “Something goes wrong, you automatically think it’s my fault?”

Mandalee shrugged. “Might as well assume the obvious until I can rule it out!”

“Charming!” Dreya spat, through tight lips. “Good to know where I stand, I suppose.”

“Well, what do you expect, stealing my best friend away from me again!” Mandalee demanded, hands balled into fists by her sides, seemingly a breath away from going for weapons.

As they stood there, glowering at each other, Cat stepped forward to intervene. “Hey, you two! What’s this about?”

She couldn’t understand where this had come from. They’d been getting along fine. Had whatever had affected the Black Tower done something to them, too?

Then their expressions changed, smiles broke out, and Cat realised she’d been had.

“You’re winding me up!” she gasped.

Dreya nodded.

“That was too easy!” Mandalee laughed. “We came up with the idea at your betrothal, yesterday.”

“I can see I’m going to have to keep an eye on you two if you’re going to be conspiring against me like that.”

“You’ll learn to love it,” Mandalee asserted with a hug. Stepping back, she asked, “Anyway, how’s your first day as an engaged couple going?”

“It was going fine – we were starting on the nursery.”

“Aww, that’s great!”

“Then Dreya’s grounds decided to attack us.”

“Ooh, that’s bad!” Mandalee sympathised, then her eyes widened in realisation. “Wait – that’s why you called me?”

Dreya nodded and explained what had happened, including the return of Ulvarius.

“Dear gods, we can’t have him running around again!”

“Of course not,” Cat agreed. “That’s why we need you.”

“Hold on,” Dreya put in. “Why did you think we called you, Mandalee?”

She was about to answer when she noticed something very wrong with Jessica and Sara. As she looked on, Jessica was suddenly violently sick, while the dark bluish-purple skin of Sara’s face turned green. Then she fainted.

*****

The moment the Chetsuans had arrived in Catriona’s Meadow, gentle reader, everything had felt wrong. They couldn’t see the others properly. It was like they were there and not there at the same time, though that made no sense. They seemed to flicker and blur before their eyes – everything in that place did. They could hear conversations, but they couldn’t understand the words. It was as if they were all jumbled up and coming out on top of each other.

They tried to move or speak, but they couldn’t.

They saw Mandalee look their way. She had always been looking their way. She had never looked their way. Everything was in contradiction. Their bodies couldn’t cope with it and suffered an acute reaction.

*****

Rushing to their side, Mandalee tried to heal them, but she couldn’t. That’s when she remembered, “This place is Timeless. Healing magic requires a temporal element! Their body functions need time, too – this place is killing them! Why did you even bring them here?”

“Things were happening so fast out there,” Dreya replied, regretfully. “I guess I didn’t stop to think.” She cursed herself. Why hadn’t she thought of this? It wasn’t like her to not think things through, no matter how pressing events might be. She really was finding it so much harder to concentrate. ‘Control,’ she told herself. ‘I will keep control.’

“Besides,” Cat put in, inadvertently coming to Dreya’s rescue, “we needed to get here, and I’m not confident enough for us to open two portals close together. I dread to think what might happen if they accidentally touched.”

“The question now is where can we safely send them?” Dreya wondered. “Earth?”

“We can’t just abandon them on another world!” Mandalee objected.

“How about the Council?” Cat suggested. “Justaria will look after them, I’m sure.”

“What!” Mandalee was incredulous. “You mean, you don’t know?”

“Know what?” asked Cat.

“That’s why I thought you’d called me.”

“Time!” Dreya gasped, repeatedly snapping her fingers as she remembered. “You said there was something wrong with Time! Why did you say that?”

*****

When she received the call, Mandalee was showing Windell some of the sights of Walminster. Shyleen was with them, too, of course. As they walked, Mandalee suddenly felt cold, as if a dark shadow had passed over the city…or perhaps across her soul. In the blink of an eye, the city changed. Some of the changes were subtle, but one thing was obvious: the beautiful Council building that had stood for more than three centuries, now lay in ruins.

She stopped a passing wizard who, bizarrely, was wearing green robes, and asked what had just happened to the Council building.

He looked at her as if she’d just asked, ‘Since when was water wet?’

“It’s always been like that,” came the reply.

“Why did you want to show me this old ruin?” Windell asked with a puzzled frown.

Before her brain had formulated a response, she noticed an information plaque in front of the ruin. It read: THE COUNCIL OF WIZARDS: THE FAILED EXPERIMENT.

It went on to explain that the first Council had been formed to try and stand against the brutal tyrant, Ulvarius. They had failed, and the experiment was never repeated.

Mandalee wasn’t particularly well versed in wizarding history, but she knew that was very wrong. Still, the truth was undeniable: there was no Council. There never was a Council.

‘Shyleen?’ she asked her leopard friend. ‘What’s going on?’

‘I don’t know,’ she replied. ‘But I think this is probably the kind of thing the Guardians were created to fix.’

‘You’re right, as always,’ Mandlee agreed, stroking her head. She was just about to call Catriona, sympathically, when she got an urgent message from Dreya. She assumed she was calling about the same thing. ‘Look after Windell for me, will you?’

Shyleen promised she would, and so Mandalee opened a Prismatic Sphere portal…or at least, she tried to.

*****

“The rest you know,” Mandalee concluded.

“Things are worse than I thought,” Dreya worried.

“Never mind that!” Cat admonished her. “We need to take care of our friends first.”

“Maybe it’ll have to be Earth, after all,” Mandalee considered.

“No, wait!” Cat cried. “There’s one other person who might just be unaffected by the temporal changes. Mandalee – any idea where we can find Michael?”

“Yes!” she replied emphatically. Thanks to her friendship with Windell, she knew exactly where the demigod was. Concentrating hard, she opened a portal. “Come with me.”

Dreya levitated the two Chetsuan girls through the portal, exiting last. On the other side, she found herself standing next to the ruins of the ancient temple that stood on the border between the Corolis Wood and the Rhynas Desert over on the continent of Northern Alloria. This had served as the rendezvous between Daelen StormTiger and Ossian Miach Kaidool – Michael – before the final push to fight Kullos’ army a few weeks ago. After laying Daelen to rest, he had been rendered homeless. His old tomb had to remain sealed to protect the fallen shadow warrior, and besides, it had never been a living space. For reasons best known to himself, he had decided to make this old temple his new home.

Seeing the shimmering blue portal open, he came to greet his visitors.

He was immediately concerned about the Chetsuan twins that floated out with the Three Guardians and rushed over to see if he could help.

“What happened?” he asked.

“Timelessness didn’t agree with them,” Dreya answered as Cat and Mandalee put their healing skills to work. She then briefly outlined the situation.

“But how?” Michael wondered. “What could make Time go so wrong?”

“Yes, I’d like to know that, too,” Cat agreed, helping Sara to her feet. She was still a bit disorientated but recovering well. Cat encouraged her to take slow, deep breaths and lean on her.

Jessica had stopped retching and was likewise relying on Mandalee for support. “Blimey, what the hell happened to us?” she asked.

“I’m afraid we’ve proved that only the Guardians can live within our Timeless zone,” Cat explained.

“My mistake,” Dreya admitted. “I was so busy trying to take you out of danger that I didn’t realise I was taking you somewhere worse.” Turning to Mandalee, she asked, “Are they OK?”

“They will be,” she nodded.

“Sorry to barge in on you like this, Michael,” Cat offered, belatedly.

“Not at all, my dear. You are welcome at any time.”

The druidess looked around at the ruins, except now they didn’t look like ruins so much as a construction site.

“You know I can shape stone with my magic, right?” she reminded him. “I could rebuild this place in no time.”

Michael shook his head.

“Thank you for the offer, but I prefer to do the work myself. I’ve been in this world for centuries, and yet I’ve never had the opportunity to create anything before. It feels good. Besides, it gives me time to think about what I might do with my life, now that I have one.”

“OK,” Cat accepted, “but any time you want a hand, I’m happy to help.”

“Anyway,” Mandalee put in, “sorry to break up the chat, but can we get back to why Time’s so screwed?” She turned to Dreya and counted off her points on her fingers as she added, “Also, while I’m asking questions: How is Ulvarius back? Why did your grounds attack you? And how come the Council that I just joined, now never formed?”