The two young women had never seen such crowds before. Even a busy marketplace in Walminster couldn’t compare. The speed of their road transport – a horseless carriage called a car – took some getting used to, as well.
Laughing, Daelen joked that if they thought that was fast, they should try a rollercoaster.
As they travelled, Daelen talked about his meeting with his dark clone.
They had agreed to communicate telepathically, to maximise privacy, and Aden had made a surprising amount of sense. After his defeat at the hands of Dreya the Dark, he’d thought of a way to use his much-drained power to his advantage: to spy on Kullos through astral projection.
Daelen admitted he’d done much the same thing when he was suffering from the effects of Pyrah’s venom.
“That’s news to me,” Cat objected.
Mandalee nodded in agreement.
Daelen apologised but assured them he had always intended to tell them when they got here and could talk without risk of sensitive information being overheard.
Mandalee had to concede that made sense and given how many times Catriona had criticised his lack of strategic thinking, she could hardly complain. She did find it interesting, though, that he and Aden had both had the same idea under similar circumstances.
“He and I were split from the same shadow warrior,” Daelen pointed out, “so it’s not too surprising that we think along similar lines, sometimes.”
“And now that you’ve remerged, I guess you’re literally of one mind again,” Mandalee supposed.
Daelen shook his head. “Not so. We’re still separate, despite our merging. That’s why he was able to dominate me for a while. I will have to battle him for the rest of my life, same as ever. Only the battlefield has changed. I can never again be what I was – what the original Daelen was. Complete. Whole.”
“You’ve glued the two halves of the box back together again,” Cat mused, thinking of his analogy for his people as being ‘light in a box,’ “but the damage cannot be reversed.”
Daelen smiled, grimly, “Not unless you really can turn back Time a thousand years. But even if you could, I suppose we’d lose everything we both experienced in that time. That’s not a price I would ever pay. Maybe if I could return home…” he trailed off, and then dismissed the idea, “but that’s impossible. Anyway, for the moment, it’s just as well,” he added, “because I can compartmentalise certain information that we don’t want my ‘other half’ to know.”
Cat nodded, recognising his oblique warning to be careful not to mention certain things, such as the presence of the being that killed her parents. Michael might call it a ‘void-creature,’ but to Cat, it would always simply be the ‘Monster.’
Daelen returned to his story.
*****
‘Kullos wasn’t paying attention to a power signature as low as mine,’ Aden told Daelen. ‘He was too busy watching you, which wasn’t difficult considering all the noise you’ve been making. What have you been doing out here, anyway? I’d have thought you’d be sneaking up on him.’
‘Believe it or not, that was the plan,’ Daelen admitted, ruefully. ‘Things got a little out of hand.’ Not wishing to discuss it any further, he asked what Aden had found out from his spying, wanting to see if it would match what he had observed for himself.
‘Well, I must admit your distraction proved quite useful,’ Aden conceded, ‘because I was able to snoop around for ages and I found out where Kullos was getting all his extra power from. You know, don’t you?’ he asked.
Daelen had learned a lot about information trading from his question-for-a-question game with Catriona, and he wasn’t going to blurt everything out just because Aden might already know.
Instead, he simply replied, ‘You tell me.’
‘He has his dimensional control device,’ Aden told him. Even though the communication was still telepathic, Daelen could still detect fear creeping into his words. ‘Or most of it, at any rate.’
‘Yes, I saw that, too,’ Daelen agreed. ‘But how? It was destroyed a thousand years ago when we were split,’ he objected.
‘Was it really?’ Aden gasped. ‘Well, goodness me, I had no idea. I mean, it’s not like I was there at the time or anything. Oh, wait – yes, I was.’
Having got that out of his system, he went on to say he’d gathered that Kullos must have been in the process of finding the lost fragments for some time.
Again, Daelen objected that even if he could find them all, it wasn’t as if he could glue it back together and expect it to work like new.
Aden pointed out that Kullos had already got it working well enough to access the energy from that part of himself that was still in the shadow realm. Aden didn’t understand where he’d found the technology to do it, but he had.
‘Someone’s been interfering with events that really ought not to be tampered with any more than they already have been,’ Daelen quoted.
‘What?’ Aden wondered.
Daelen decided to add Time Intervention to the list of information to be shielded from his dark clone.
‘Just something I read in a sci-fi novel on Earth,’ he lied.
‘Why would you bring that up now?’ Aden frowned.
‘Just popped into my head,’ he shrugged, dismissing the issue.
It was all just speculation, anyway. Kullos had always been a skilled engineer, so it was conceivable he’d figured out a way to do it all on his own.
Aden conceded they might have underestimated Kullos’ technical skill.
‘It could even be an application of some kind of new magic,’ Daelen supposed.
He had expected Aden to scoff at such a suggestion and was surprised when he didn’t.
‘Before my run-in with Dreya the Dark,’ he replied ruefully, ‘I might have dismissed such an idea, but now…’ He trailed off and then admitted something Daelen never thought he’d hear his clone say. ‘Daelen, I was scared. Me, a shadow warrior, scared of a mortal wizard!’
‘They’re on the verge of something,’ Daelen offered. ‘Me, you, Kullos and Michael – we can’t go on, the four of us like it’s business as usual. Things have changed, and we need to do the same.’
Daelen had to hide a smile when he realised he was paraphrasing Catriona. She had made quite the impression on him already. He wondered how strong that influence might yet grow.
Aden agreed, ‘I think Kullos figured that out a while ago and he’s left us scrambling to catch up. Think about it: he must have enough of his control device assembled by now to re-Ascend, but he hasn’t. Why?’
‘Because that’s not his intent,’ Daelen realised.
*****
“So, what is his intent?” Mandalee asked as they reached the shopping mall itself.
Cat nodded. She wanted to know the same thing.
As they stepped towards the doors to the shopping mall, they opened automatically, as if in welcome invitation to the treasure trove of wonders that lay beyond. It was by far the largest single building they had ever seen. Even the Council building in Walminster could fit inside it. Either side of wide aisles, were densely packed shops, selling all manner of clothes, shoes, bags and jewellery. The smell of food mingled with that of perfume, and the noise was deafening: A million conversations, constant background music, announcements and strange sounds made by technology and gadgets at whose function neither my mother nor Aunt Mandalee could begin to guess.
True to his word, the presence of people from the ‘sci-fi convention’ did seem to provide excellent cover for their Tempestrian clothing and Cat’s half-Faery features. Indeed, there were several people – native humans, they assumed – dressed in outfits far more outlandish than Mandalee’s white leather and Catriona’s red robes. Catriona’s usually feint Faery spots seemed to glow under the strange lighting, but people just thought they were done with make-up. Most of the crowd never even gave them a second glance, although there were a few smiles, and several people asked to perform what the girls assumed must be some kind of religious or cultural ritual known as ‘taking a selfie.’ Keen to fit in with local customs, they saw no reason to refuse. When these people showed them the end result of their ‘selfie,’ Catriona recognised it as a form of photography, but clearly far in advance of what their world had yet developed.
Mandalee was quite happy to soak up the atmosphere and enjoy the experience, while Cat had to restrain herself from continually asking how things worked. She was especially interested to learn that these people had taken Calin’s core concept of making knowledge accessible to all, to a whole new level. They had found a way to make knowledge instantly available from anywhere, as she understood it, by storing all their information in clouds in the sky. The sky that, she realised as she looked through the glass dome in the ceiling, was totally free of void storms.
Catriona filed that away in her mind under ‘things to discuss later.’ For now, she needed to focus on what Daelen was telling them, and his answer to Mandalee’s question definitely brought her mind back down to, well, Earth, she supposed.
Daelen spoke two words, “Heaven’s Surrender.”
“What’s that when it’s at home?” Mandalee wondered.
Whatever it was, Catriona was positive of one thing: it did not sound good. Still, she was momentarily distracted by her friend’s turn of phrase.
“‘When it’s at home’?” she asked, with a puzzled frown.
Mandalee explained that she’d been trying to discreetly listen to snippets of conversations in the crowd, and she’d overheard that expression.
“Did I use it right?” she asked Daelen.
The shadow warrior grinned and nodded.
“Spot on,” he assured her, “and if you’re interested in learning Earth expressions, you’re going to love Jessica. She uses them all the time.”
Bringing the conversation back to more important matters, Mandalee repeated her question.
“So, ‘Heaven’s Surrender’?”
Daelen reminded his friends that Kullos had once been both his people’s Chief Engineer and their greatest Champion.
“Heaven’s Surrender was a weapon he devised in a desperate attempt to win our ongoing war.”
It had been his responsibility to deploy the weapon against their enemy, only their enemy found out about it and took it from him before he could use it. He was severely injured in the process, and while he was evacuated to a medical facility, his shadow warrior unit tried to wrest the weapon from her. The weapon was damaged in the struggle, and a fraction of its power was unleashed. It wasn’t enough to harm their enemy, but the entire two-dozen-strong shadow warrior unit was totally obliterated.
“Any further development on the weapon was banned from that moment on,” Daelen explained. “It was deemed too dangerous.”
“So, how can Kullos use it, if this enemy of yours took the only one?” Mandalee asked.
“Because there was a prototype,” Daelen explained as he continued to guide them around the mall. “There was no known safe way to dispose of it, so it was entrusted to, guess who?”
“Kullos!” his friends chorused.
Daelen nodded. “He kept it safely locked away in his own personal vault.”
“Don’t tell me,” Cat groaned, shutting her eyes and cringing at the thought. “A pocket dimension.”
Again, Daelen nodded. “Right.”
“And with a repaired control device thing, he’ll be able to pull that prototype out of mothballs and use it,” Mandalee deduced. “That’s why you recombined with your dark clone? So, you can get there quick and stop him before he gets all the pieces?”
Daelen shook his head.
“It’s too late for that, isn’t it?” Cat surmised.
Daelen confirmed it.
“He already has enough pieces to activate the weapon; it’ll just be unstable. Trouble is, he’s unstable. If I confront him before his device is complete, he’ll just use the weapon anyway. But if we wait until he does have all the pieces, at least the weapon will be controllable.”
“Oh great, he’ll be in control when he blows us all to bits,” Mandalee sniped.
“My clone and I agreed we’d have only one chance: our recombined power might just be enough for me to take it from him and use it to destroy him, or least the part of him that’s in this mortal plane. Nothing I can do about the rest of him, but if I can re-shatter his control device – assuming it doesn’t blow itself apart anyway, due to Heaven’s Surrender, he will be cut off just like the rest of my people.”
“As you are cut off from them,” Cat realised. Of course, she already knew that Alycia’s Barrier prevented all travel between the mortal realm and the higher planes. She just hadn’t framed the thought in quite that way to see it from Daelen’s perspective. She knew what it was like to lose a home. She was lucky – her ‘Angel’ had given her a new one. “With Kullos gone and you recombined, you’ll be the last of your kind in our world,” she realised, further. “The last living shadow warrior.”
Daelen nodded. “I’ll be alone.”
Cat hugged him tight, tears in her eyes.
“No,” she insisted. “You won’t.”
Daelen smiled, weakly, at the sentiment.
Even Mandalee, though she still wasn’t sure she should trust him, at least felt sympathy and refrained from any remarks about her friend’s feelings for him.
Instead, she asked something that had always puzzled her about his kind.
“You’ve explained how, when you and Kullos came down to our mortal plane, you had to leave part of yourselves behind, but you haven’t explained what that means for that part of you.” Convinced she was once again failing to make any sense, she tried again. “What I’m asking is: while this part of you is running around down here, is the other part of you still running around up there?”
Daelen shook his head. “When my people used to do this all the time – before they were cut off – it was like going to sleep. In fact, once upon a time, long ago, before our understanding grew, my people used to believe the mortal realm wasn’t real.”
“What?” his companions demanded.
Daelen smiled reassuringly. “It was a very long time ago, but they honestly used to think their dimensional control devices were dream enhancers and the mortal realm was just some kind of shared dreamscape.” He chuckled, as he continued, “Even when they began to accept that this was a real place they were travelling to, there was a school of thought that suggested we’d dreamed you into existence.”
“Maybe you did,” Mandalee considered. “There are a few creation myths on Tempestria that say the world was dreamed into being. Maybe your people were the dreamers.”
“Philosophy aside,” Cat put in, “in the case of you and Kullos, you’ve both been asleep for a very long time.”
“Once again, putting it in mortal terms, we’d both be classed as being in a coma.”
“Can your people survive being in a coma for that long?” Mandalee wondered.
“I honestly don’t know,” Daelen admitted. “Nor do I know how long the part of me that’s ‘running around down here’ as you put it, can survive without the part that should be ‘running around up there.’ Plus, you know time works differently on Tempestria compared to Earth, so imagine trying to relate either of those to how it works on my home plane of existence.”
“I imagine you can’t,” Cat replied.
“Exactly,” Daelen confirmed. “All I can do – all anyone can do – is live my life for as long as I’m alive. My people call you ‘mortals’ and I use the term out of habit myself, even though I know it’s a misnomer. After all, it’s not as if shadow warriors are immortal. The nature of our existence is different, but still, we are born, we live, we age, and we die, just like you.”
Once again choosing practicalities over philosophy, Cat pressed, “Anyway, going back to Heaven’s Surrender, what can we do about it?”
“Well, I’m the only one who knows enough about the weapon to shield your world from the overspill of power.”
“How?” Cat asked.
“I was working on a different angle in our war because Kullos wasn’t the only Champion of our people with technical expertise. Not a weapon, but a shield. Some way to keep our enemy out of our plane of reality forever. I can adapt that shield to contain the power of Heaven’s Surrender and protect your world.”
“But how can you access it, if you can’t reach your home plane of reality?” Mandalee wondered.
It was Cat who answered, “Because it’s already here, isn’t it?” she realised. “In Michael’s Tomb.”
Daelen gasped in astonishment, “How on Earth did you figure that one out? Oh, no, don’t tell me: You used your special ability of paying attention.”
“Well, isn’t it obvious? That place is full of technology. Some of it keeps Michael in…what’s that word again…stasis? But that wasn’t its original purpose. It couldn’t be. It was built before Michael even existed. Besides, there’s an entire lower level to the place. I’m guessing that’s where this shield of yours is kept, yes?”
Daelen confirmed it. “In a way, Kullos was partly right all those centuries ago: there was a sort of weapon being built down here. It seemed like the best way to keep it out of enemy hands. She was too busy with our war to even notice the mortal realm. In fact, I don’t believe she even knows it exists.”
“And what fancy name did you give this shield power of yours?” Mandalee asked.
“The only thing I could call it. To my mind, it was a final roll of the dice. There was no way to know if it would be successful in keeping the enemy out. When I came to deploy it against her, in mortal terms, I was just going to close my eyes and make a Wish.”
“So, in a nutshell,” Cat recapped, “you’re planning to steal this ultimate weapon from Kullos, use it against him, and protect our world with a Wish?”
Daelen nodded pensively.
To Mandalee, she remarked, “And you think I have ridiculous radical plans.”
There followed a profound silence, penetrated only when the assassin declared, “Dear gods, I need a drink.”
“Me, too,” Catriona agreed.
“I think we could all use one.” Daelen approved. “Let’s take a break from our mission. We’ve been through a lot already, and there’s plenty more to do, but for now, for the next few hours, I officially veto any conversation about wars, our fight against Kullos and higher planes of reality. There’s loads to do in this place, so let’s just try to forget about it for a while, agreed?”
The two young women glanced at each other, then looked back at Daelen.
“Agreed,” they chimed in unison.