A couple of hours later, the druidess stirred and sat up, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.
“I'm alive!” she breathed. “It worked!” Her friends gathered around her, all making sure she was all right. “I'm fine,” she laughed, “honestly! I thought I'd lost it there for a moment, but I pulled through. Now, where's that book? After all the trouble I've been through, I think it's time I read it.”
Dreya told her she had been unsure if it would be safe for any single one of them to hold it, so she had entrusted it to one of her death knights with strict instructions to give it only to Cat.
He handed it to her upon her request.
“Why thank you, Sir Knight,” she offered politely.
“You are most welcome, my Lady,” he replied.
Catriona blushed and giggled girlishly, then responded to her friends' strange looks, saying, “Sorry, it's just that archaic ‘My Lady’…and he's really quite handsome in his own way.”
Nobody elected to comment on that.
The others were wary when Catriona opened the volume, slowly, carefully, but nothing out of the ordinary happened – the defences were gone.
She read the title aloud: “Guardians of Time & Magic – the Chronicles of Magias.”
“Magias? The legendary first wizard?” Dreya breathed in awe. “The mythical founder of magical society?”
“Not so mythical, apparently,” Cat replied absently, already absorbed in the text, “although, more correctly, Magias was the legendary first sorceress. It’s quite clear from the text that Magias was female.”
“How come everyone’s always assumed the first wizard must be male?” Daelen wondered.
Putting on her very best Jessica voice, Mandalee pointedly replied, “I think it’s called sexism, love!”
“Touché,” he conceded.
It was a long time before Catriona spoke again. When she did, she summarised what she'd learned.
*****
At the beginning of the world, the gods discovered they could use inter-planar forces for a power they called magic. They kept the power for themselves, except for leaking it out to mortals in exchange for worship and even then, only if they felt like it. The force grew and evolved until it gained a kind of intelligence – even sentience. It gave itself a name: Magias. The gods realised their mistake; Magias would provide mortals with power over magic. The gods grew jealous and resolved to destroy Magias, but another power intervened: nature. Having created something, destroying it was forbidden by rules of the cosmos that could not be tampered with by mere gods.
“What do you mean, destruction is forbidden?” Daelen objected. “I've destroyed plenty of enemies in my time.” To illustrate his point, he blasted a cluster of trees into dust with a small beam cannon blast.
Dreya shook her head. “No, mighty shadow warrior. That's not what she means. You have disintegrated those trees, and you have killed your enemies, but you have not destroyed anything.”
Catriona nodded. “What you have done is change living matter into dead matter, and because my magic has a temporal element, I can fix that.” So saying, she used her druid magic to restore the trees to their former condition.
Mandalee agreed, “Death is a part of life; if you burn a forest, you change it into ashes and smoke.”
Catriona concluded, “Changing things from one state to another is what magic and nature are all about.”
*****
Though it may seem as if wielders of wizard and clerical magic can create something from nothing, gentle reader, the truth is, they are merely giving magic shape and form. There has only ever been one true Act of Creation – the Cataclysm that began the cosmos. One may attribute that Act to a Creator and in some sense that may be true. That is unknowable and beside the point. The point is Creation happened. Time simply allows that which was initially Created to change. Everything that exists changes. Everything that lives dies, but it remains a fact of Creation that they lived, they existed. Nothing within the rules of the cosmos can deny that. Nothing unreal exists. Nothing that exists can be made unreal.
*****
“The gods were trying to command magic itself to cease to exist. They knew there was a power outside the walls of Creation, the power we call IT. That is the only power that can truly destroy. ‘Uncreate’ or ‘unmake’ might be better words,” Cat suggested. “To make something cease to exist. Not just in what we think of as the present and future, but in the past as well, as if it were never created in the first place. There is an excellent reason for this rule: even the gods could not foresee the consequences of true destruction. It's not just about the object itself; it's everything it interacted with.”
“I understand,” Daelen agreed, “by uncreating one object, you'd set off a chain of events that might change the whole of reality.”
“Well, not just any object,” Dreya countered. “I mean, it’s unlikely that the cosmos would unravel because you unmade my favourite teacup. Some objects are more important than others.”
“Even if the effect were not so extreme, it could still be a terrible weapon,” Mandalee pointed out. “Imagine if someone tried to unmake people. Not just murder them – terrible as that is – make them unreal, make them cease to exist…” she trailed off. Then those old, familiar feelings of insecurity rose up. “Don’t mind me. I’m probably not making any sense, as usual.”
Cat and Dreya refuted that.
Daelen, too, thought she was making a great deal of sense and tried to imagine such a weapon, before quickly deciding he didn’t want to think about it. “But still the gods tried it?” he wondered.
Cat confirmed it. “They thought they could limit the effect to only unmake the kinds of frequencies that wizards use, leaving those the gods pass on to their clerics intact, but once IT gained a foothold, IT wouldn’t stop until the whole of reality unravelled.
“What Magias did was what I had to do tonight: reject and resist the chaotic power of IT and claim the right to her own life, her own agency. As a result of that, IT was banished once more, and magic could be withheld no longer. Mortal achievement didn’t need to be at the whim of fickle gods – they could achieve anything they wanted by their own agency.”
“All my life,” Mandalee offered, “I’ve always believed that magic is a gift of the gods. Now it seems it was a gift they never wanted us to have. If they’d had their way, they would have kept it from us forever.”
‘Not all of us,’ Shyleen told her. ‘That kind of attitude is partly why I left.’
‘I know, Shyleen,’ Mandalee returned. ‘Just as I know you’ve never withheld your magic from me.’
‘All I have is yours, Mandalee. Always.’
At that, the Cleric of Nature began stroking her feline friend.
“Obviously,” Catriona continued, resuming her lecture, “this is a creation myth, and not to be taken literally, but the essence of the story is true. However, there was one form of magic of which even Magias was wary: Time magic. It was available to clerics in a small way, expressing itself in the form of healing. Druids could do it, too, in a different way. But wizard magic was much more attractive to people for the overt power it offered, and so druid magic became something of a niche art, largely forgotten in the scheme of things as their founder, Alycia, Mother of Nature, slept.”
Catriona broke off from the script to add, “Until, that is, one brilliant, resourceful and, let’s be honest, stunningly beautiful half-Faery pioneer came along: me!” Nobody seemed terribly impressed, so she just shrugged. “Suit yourselves.”
“But true Time magic is more than that, isn’t it?” Mandalee asked.
Dreya already had the answer. “What Cat is talking about is nothing less than total mastery of time and space. The very fabric of reality. This world. All worlds. With such power, I could truly be the Greatest Mage Who Ever Lived…and need not worry about any who come after.” Her eyes had taken on a dangerous glow, though her smile was sweet and her voice dripping with honey. “Tell me, Cat, my love, how is this power released?”
“It's all right here in the Chronicles,” Catriona replied absently.
“I see. And is it all written in that secret language of yours?”
“Oh, no!” Cat laughed. “That’s just the cover. Now that the security seals are open, the whole point of the book is to make Time magic accessible. It wouldn’t be able to do that very well if I were the only person who could read it, would it?”
“No, it wouldn’t,” Dreya agreed. Then her voice became hard and cold. “In that case, ‘my love,’ I have no further use for you.” Before anyone could react, Dreya snatched the book from Catriona's grasp, stood and focussed her will on her girlfriend, unleashing her ultimate power word, “DIE.”
Mandalee and Daelen cried out as one, but it was too late; Catriona flopped lifeless to the ground. One of the ghouls floated forward, grabbed the staff and handed it to its mistress, who spoke again, “TORCH.” Catriona's body went up in flames, turning it to ash and smoke, blowing away on the breeze until there was nothing left but a patch of scorched grass. The others were too stunned to leap to the fight as Dreya's undead guards prepared to defend their dark mistress.
“You killed her!” Daelen cried in despair. “She trusted you – you even got me trusting you – and you betrayed her!”
With a misty-eyed look at the place where Catriona had been a moment ago, Dreya sighed, regretfully, “If it’s any consolation, I really did love her, but I told you the magic would always come first and now that they’re unlocked, these,” she held up the book and staff, “represent the advantage of a lifetime.”
The others were over their shock, now, and advanced on the sorceress. Shyleen growled and prepared to strike at the killer of her half-Faery friend, but Dreya warned them off.
“Together, the three of you might – just might – be able to stop me, but I doubt it, and I can be long gone before you can call Mickey and his gang. If you come after me, then what? What about Kullos? After fighting me, even if you won, you’d be too drained to fight him. You know he won’t wait forever. Pick your target, shadow warrior: me or him – you can’t kill us both.”
“If Kullos wins, he’ll destroy the world!” Daelen reminded her. “The world you’re standing on!”
Dreya shrugged, unconcerned. “That’s OK. I conquered another one just in case!” She laughed. “Sara and Jessica love me! They think I’m some kind of hero, the Saviour of Phitonia. They’ve no idea I only did it to give myself a second power base. If Kullos kills you and decides to come after me, I’ll have the resources of that entire world behind me – dragons and Chetsuans alike. Before he can strike at me, I will have learned all I need to be the Mistress of Time and Space – trust me, I’m a quick study.
“Do what you want, shadow warrior, but whatever you do, I win! Pray that Kullos kills you, Daelen, for if he doesn't, I will make you my favourite toy. I have many interesting games to play with you, although I don't expect you'll find them too much fun. Dreya the Dark has a bad habit of breaking her best toys!”
To Mandalee, she simply offered, “My condolences.”
“Go to hell!” she spat back.
“Now there’s a challenge I hadn’t considered,” Dreya remarked, raising her eyebrows. “Enough!” she declared at last. “Guards, we’re done here. We won’t return to the Black Tower. That’s the first place Kullos would come looking for me. I’ll commandeer that ship, the Dolphin – it evaded his gaze once, why not twice? Back to StormClaw and then to Phitonia. Consolidate my power base there.” With a final “Farewell,” she and her guards became one with the shadows and drifted away.
*****
When she was gone, Mandalee collapsed in a heap on the ground and wept for her lost friend.
“Dammit!” Daelen swore. “I should have killed her the moment I met her.”
“Too late for that, I’m afraid, Daelen,” Mandalee sniffled. “We need to decide what we’re going to do now.”
“Do?” Daelen wondered. “We stop Dreya, avenge Cat. That’s what we do!”
“I’m not so sure,” Mandalee disputed, drying her tears. “I think we need to talk about that.”
“Talk?” Daelen demanded. “We should be racing after Dreya!”
“Stay calm, Daelen.”
“Calm? Catriona is dead, and you want me to be calm?”
“Yes, stay calm and think: what about Kullos?”
“Kullos? Well right at this moment, I don't ca—”
“What are you, Daelen, my echo?” Mandalee wondered with a quizzical look. “You seem to be repeating the keyword in everything I say.”
“Mandalee, I know you’re grieving, but this is no time for…jokes…”
His voice trailed off as Dreya and Catriona walked into the clearing, arm in arm, laughing.
“I'm afraid the joke's on you, Daelen,” Mandalee smirked.
Daelen was so shocked, he would have collapsed if Mandalee hadn’t stood and propped him up. “What’s going on?”
“Just a little deception,” Cat answered with a grin.
“The beauty of a sympathic link,” Mandalee added. “As you know, I have a special relationship with nature. In a place like this, I hear animals talking all the time. Through them, I became aware of a pack of wolves hiding in the bushes. They seemed odd somehow, so I used my link with Cat to ask her opinion.”
“Remember what I told you, Daelen, about morphing into a tiger?” Cat asked.
“You pointed out how it's easier to fool humans than it is a real tiger,” Daelen replied.
“Exactly, well I cast Mirror Image, leaving my copy talking to you and checked out the pack in my own wolf form. They never noticed their numbers had suddenly increased by one. Anyway, they may have looked like wolves, but they weren't acting very wolf-like.”
Daelen gasped, “Spies! Sent by Kullos!”
“That's what Dreya said. She could use her own magic through me to penetrate their disguise. They weren’t really shapeshifters. Just wizards using illusion magic.”
“Wizards? The ones who were being taken against their will?”
Cat shook her head and told him, “Not all of them were.”
“Renegade wizards,” Dreya spat, her words a curse. “The Council suspected there were some working for Kullos and now I knew it was true. They were interested in gaining the Chronicles of Magias for their master, so I figured they would follow the bait wherever it went. I cast a copy spell of my own, through which I put on the show of betraying you.”
“Nice job, by the way,” Mandalee commended her. “I loved the ‘Dreya the Dark has a bad habit of breaking her best toys’ bit. I got chills!”
“Really? I was worried it was a bit much.”
“No, pitched it just right, for me.”
“Thanks, and speaking of performances, what about you? Crying on cue like that. I was impressed. Really sold it, I thought.”
“Aww, thanks, Dreya. I just had to get myself in that space, you know? Imagine how I’d feel if Cat really had just died, and channel that.”
Dreya nodded appreciatively.
“You did refer to yourself in the third person, though, Dreya,” Cat pointed out. “I thought you had a rule against that.”
“I was in character. It doesn’t count,” Dreya insisted.
“OK, I’ll let you off.”
“If you three have finished with drama club,” Daelen grumbled, “could somebody please explain what just happened?”
“Oh, yes, sorry,” Mandalee apologised. “Well, I stayed to ensure the ‘wolves’ followed Dreya's copy and to keep you in check, so you didn't ruin everything. We couldn't risk telling you, and besides, your reaction helped to make it more convincing.”
“The book Dreya's copy stole was actually my grandmother's recipe book for herbal remedies,” Cat explained.
“One of my guards will give it back shortly,” Dreya promised.
Cat smiled in acknowledgement. “As for my staff…” she held out her hand, and it appeared obediently out of her pocket dimension. “That was a fake, too. I thought a decoy might be a sensible idea. I shaped the wooden part while we were on the Dolphin. As for the blue crystal…”
Mandalee indicated her left earlobe, which was now bare.
“Had to sacrifice an earring,” she sighed.
Daelen boomed with laughter, allowing waves of relief to wash over him. “I am way out of my depth with you three! I apologise for doubting you, Dreya.”
The sorceress waved the apology aside. “Your doubts also helped to convince our enemies. If you believed my betrayal was real, so would Kullos’ spies.”
“So, what does your copy have planned for them?”
Before Dreya could answer, her undead guards returned. The Knight commander bowed and reported, “Nine renegade wizards destroyed.”
“Good,” Daelen approved.
“Nine?” Mandalee put in. “There were ten wolves.”
At that, the lead ghoul shimmered closer to Dreya and explained, “If it pleases you, Mistress, before you cancelled your copy, she ordered me to keep one alive as a prisoner.”
“Interesting,” Dreya remarked. “Did she say why?”
“He claims to have a message for Lady Catriona, Mistress.”
“I’ll deal with that later,” Catriona decided, dismissing the issue for the moment. “Now that we're alone, we can finish what we were doing.”