The ancient crypt lay on a rocky outcrop of the northernmost tip of Elvaria. Below, the ocean swelled and churned, while above the winds swirled and howled. The whole place looked ready to fall into the water with the very next gust of wind, the next raindrop, the next breath, yet it had stood unmoving for many hundreds of years. Some even said thousands, but that was surely impossible.
From her memory of seeing Michael on the Day of the Angel, his tomb seemed the perfect match for the Champion of the Gods himself. Made as he was, from all skin and bone, seemingly devoid of flesh and muscle, one would think he would be a fragile creature, ready to collapse at any moment. Yet, he was an imposing figure. Next to the shadow warriors, he was the most powerful being in the world and had endured longer than any other on Tempestria.
Catriona walked up to the large iron gates that served as the entrance, saying, “I, Catriona Redfletching, have come to free you from the bonds of death. I come here to break the rune seal that binds you to your prison.”
With a short wave of her hand, the gates and the mighty doors beyond them began to grind loudly open. Dust and debris flittered out from the now-gaping orifice. Silence rose to greet and envelop Catriona as she stepped inside.
She began to walk up the long staircase. Daelen had been very clear on this point: she must ignore the stairs leading downward to ‘The Wishing Well’ and instead climb upward, following the illuminated sign that read, ‘The Tower of Dreams.’
“I wonder if he does,” Cat murmured to herself. She’d never thought about it before.
Catriona did not dream. Not that she knew of, anyway. Her whole life, she had never once woken up with even the slightest impression of anything since she settled down to sleep. Cat didn’t value dreams the way others seemed to, so she didn’t feel she was missing anything. Still, if her life were like Michael’s – waking only to help Daelen tip the scales in his favour, in his recurring battles, and Fated to die at the end – it would surely be a mercy to at least dream of a life.
Or would that be even more cruel, she reconsidered? To dream of a life one could never have. Surely, that would make his real life a waking nightmare.
She made a mental note to discuss none of this with Michael when he woke, because either way, she didn’t think she could bear the answer.
The spiral staircase wound so high, the top was shrouded in darkness. Assuming it had a top.
“What if it’s like a bottomless pit,” Cat wondered, “only in reverse?”
She dismissed the idea. This wasn’t the time for flights of fancy. Thinking of which, flying seemed a much preferable option to all those steps, so she shifted to Tawny owl form, the better for seeing in the dark, and flew up the stairwell.
As Catriona reached, at long last, the uppermost level – for it did have one, after all – the air grew increasingly stagnant, and that made flying difficult, so she alighted on the balcony and shifted back again. Despite the stillness of the atmosphere, impossibly, there was dust dancing in the non-existent winds. Torn tapestries clung to the walls, though the scenes depicted on them were long faded. Reaching a metal door, she paused, sniffing at the air, almost tasting the remnants of age-old magic still present there in that dusty crypt. Cat stopped for a moment and looked at the door, wondering what might lay beyond. Pushing a button at the side, as Daelen had told her, caused the metal door to open by itself. A moment later, she was stepping beyond to end the speculation and find out.
*****
What my mother saw in that chamber was beyond her ability to describe, and so, if you’ll forgive me, gentle reader, I shall use my own words, rather than my mother’s impressions.
One might expect a crypt or tomb to be dark and foreboding, with stone archways and thick pillars supporting high domed ceilings, filled with candles and cobwebs. And in many ways, so it was, but set against the walls were control panels with buttons and flashing lights. Bleeps sounded a very slow, rhythmic heartbeat, matching the progress of oscillating lines on screens. In short, gentle reader, it was high technology on a world where the word had not yet been used in that context. To my mother at the time, it was magic – just magic unlike any she had even imagined, much less experienced. She immediately had a million questions and probably a million more that she didn’t have the words to frame into sentences.
*****
But Catriona didn’t have time to stop and stare. Daelen needed her. Secretly, she found she rather liked that idea. A being from a realm far beyond the gods for whom, it was reasonable to assume, rooms such as this crypt were commonplace, needing the help of a simple half-Faery druid girl. Her overriding thought, however, even above that, was the firm belief that one day, the people of Tempestria would also have commonplace rooms like this. One day, the magic in this place might be contained in something no larger than her staff. Perhaps, even, one day, Tempestrian children would play with toys that were more sophisticated than this, and this Crypt would stand as a museum of knowledge and skills long since surpassed by newer and more wonderous invention.
On a dais in the centre of the room, was Ossian Miach Kaidool, Champion of the Gods, asleep in all of his bony glory…
In all of his bony naked glory, it turned out, as Catriona stepped closer.
Daelen had called this a ‘Regeneration Casket’ and told her that all she needed to do, was wave her hand over something called a ‘hand sensor’ on a ‘control panel,’ which would recognise that part of his essence that she now carried within her, awakening Michael from ‘stasis.’
The words were strange, but looking at the bank of tiny dancing lights before her now, there was one area upon which there was inscribed the outline of a hand. It seemed to Catriona that whatever fancy language one might use, it was clearly saying, ‘Place Hand Here.’
Doing so, she closed her eyes and prayed, “I call forth both heaven and hell, all that is holy and all that is demonic; I call forth the Powers of Magias, Blessed Alycia and the Great Maker that Created all. I plead that you breathe life back into this great warrior’s body. I know that I ask for both heaven and hell to be moved, but please Great Ancient Powers, do this, that he might help us save this precious world.”
Catriona couldn’t see or hear anything outside, but she imagined that the sky began to grow eerily black. The howling of a wolf could be heard over the growing howling of the winds. Surely, the whole world quaked as if to swallow its people down into its depths.
In reality, though, gentle reader, this was nothing more than my mother’s overactive imagination at work. Indeed, the task had been completed before she even stopped speaking.
The ancient warrior sat up and quite startled Catriona, saying, “A simple ‘Wake up, Michael’ would have sufficed.”
“Really?” Cat sounded disappointed. “Seemed a bit anti-climactic to me, although I do have a…friend…who always says I have a flair for the dramatic.”
“Did you make up that whole speech on the spot?” Michael asked.
Cat nodded while trying desperately to keep her eyes firmly fixed on his face and not anywhere…lower down.
“Then your friend is right. It was very impressive.”
“Thank you.”
“The second thing that strikes me about you is that you are not Daelen StormTiger.”
“It’s the long hair, isn’t it?” she joked. “That’s what gave me away. It’s happened before. Seriously, I’m Catriona Redfletching, you can call me Cat. I’m here on Daelen’s behalf. He needs you to tip the fight in his favour.”
“Just for a change,” Michael nodded, wearily. Catriona turned her back as he rose and stepped free of his coffin-like bed. (Or bed-like coffin, if you prefer.) “Which one is it this time?”
“Both, really,” Cat replied, “although Aden’s the more immediate danger.”
“Who?”
“Sorry, I mean the dark clone. That’s what he calls himself now: Aden-El, Aden for short. My fault. I suggested anagrams.”
“And he went with Aden-El?”
“I’m afraid so.”
Cat could hear him getting dressed, so she continued to stare at the entryway.
“So why did Daelen send you and also, how?”
“Why? Short version: his alarm clock broke, someone changed the time, and he overslept. So now he doesn’t know when either Kullos or ‘Aden’ are going to be around. How? Again, short version: he put a piece of his essence inside me so I could get past the security.”
Michael touched her shoulder, gently but firmly, and spun her around to face him. Thankfully, he was fully dressed now. He looked angry, but not at her, it seemed.
“Did he explain what that could mean for you?”
“Yes, he did.” Cat nodded, solemnly. “He had to make it brief, there wasn’t much time, but yes, everything he did was with my fully informed consent. I had to make a choice quickly and I made it.” She smiled, nervously, and Michael let her go. “Anyway,” she added, trying to lighten the mood once more, “believe it or not, this isn’t even the most ridiculous radical idea I’ve ever had in my life.”
“I believe you,” Michael replied. “Please excuse me, I need to charge up so we can join Daelen as soon as possible.”
Cat decided not to ask what he meant by ‘charge up,’ and simply watch instead. He moved over to a bank of flashing lights in the East wall, pressed some buttons and placed his hand on another ‘control panel hand sensor.’ In response, an alcove sprang to life, buzzing with higher planar energy. Words and numbers scrolled down a screen like some kind of incantation, which meant nothing to Cat but clearly did to Michael who muttered to himself that ‘it’ (whatever ‘it’ was) was now safe.
“By the way,” Cat remarked, “the magic in this place is fascinating.”
Michael explained that it was actually technology. “But your mistake is understandable. How did Daelen put it? Ah, yes: Any sufficiently advanced form of technology would be indistinguishable from magic.”
“Then how do you know it isn’t?” Cat wondered, challenging the concept. “If it’s indistinguishable, by definition, you can’t tell the difference. So, if it was sufficiently advanced, even for you, even for Daelen StormTiger himself, how could you be sure it wasn’t really magic, rather than technology?”
Michael considered that for a moment. “I suppose I couldn’t,” he admitted, at last.
“In that case, any sufficiently advanced form of magic would be indistinguishable from technology.”
“I like you,” Michael decided with a grin. “You’re trouble.”
“So I’ve been told,” she agreed, grinning back.
Michael stepped into the alcove and seemed to absorb the energy within. Cat would have expected it to be painful, but if it was, Michael hid it well.
Cat decided to forgo any questions about what he was doing; it was unlikely she would understand the answers. Instead, she latched onto something else.
“This ‘Regeneration Casket,’” she ventured. “Fancy name for healing device, yes?”
“It reverts my body back to its original default settings,” he answered, “but keeps my mind as it is. I wouldn’t be much use if I forgot everything every time.”
“What if you wanted to change something about your body?”
“Why would I want to do that?”
“Not saying you would, but hypothetically, could you change your…” she stumbled over the unfamiliar words, “default settings?”
“In principle, yes,” he answered, “but in practice, you would need a way to show it what you wanted, and if you already had the default body you wanted, you wouldn’t need the machine to change it.”
“You might if you only had it temporarily without the machine,” Cat mused. Now the big question. “Would it work for a human?”
“Species wouldn’t matter. It would use whatever default settings you programmed it with. Why are you asking all this?”
“Oh, just thinking out loud,” Cat replied, dismissively. Years ago, she’d made a promise to a friend and though she knew she might never see her again, she continued to work on that promise. She’d let Mandalee down once; if ever she gave her a second chance, that would never happen again.
Changing tack, she went back to their earlier conversation.
“When I told you this wasn’t the most ridiculous radical idea I’ve ever had, you said, ‘I believe you.’ What did you mean by that?”
“I simply imagine that being touched by an Angel is likely to lead to a remarkable life, and a spirit that won’t be constrained by what others think is impossible.”