Justaria levitated up to the Guardians. Breathless, she advised Catriona, “You’ve still got a few hundred people trapped in the medical area. Release them. I’m convinced they’re with us now. Kullos kept the more hardline elements inside his fortress.”
“Are you sure?” Cat asked.
“Trust me. I’ve been in this camp for a long time. They realise you trapped them to save them, and Kullos just discarded them. That helped me convince them that Kullos has been lying to them. They want to fight on our side.”
“The clerics should have mostly cured the sickness by now,” Mandalee offered. “They might be tired and not at their best, but they’re better than nothing.”
“What if they betray us?” Cat questioned, suddenly very conscious that everyone – including one of the Triumvirate – was looking to her, a simple half-Faery druid girl, to make these life and death decisions.
“A few hundred extra on their side won’t make much difference,” Dreya pointed out. “Our people are hopelessly outnumbered already. But that many on our side could buy enough time for us to get back.”
“It’s worth the risk, Cat,” Mandalee counselled.
Even as they spoke, Cat saw that some of the reinforcements were trying to break through her glass barrier, and the way those on the inside were arming themselves, it did look like they were expecting execution more than rescue.
“Alright,” she agreed and shattered the glass wall that had annexed that section, making sure the wind threw the shards of glass outwards so as not to injure their potential new allies. As the attacking forces shielded themselves, those new allies confirmed that potential, wasting no time in going on the offensive. Justaria levitated back down to lead them.
Then Mandalee turned to Dreya and asked, “Can you do something about the energy barrier? Our people need the freedom to move now.” She didn’t add, ‘Or to retreat, if necessary’ but it was heavily implied.
Dreya nodded and ordered her guards to stop playing with Kullos’ knights and destroy them.
“It’s a pity I won’t get to absorb their power, but I’ll just have to get enough from Kullos himself to compensate.”
Catriona knew what that command had cost her girlfriend – she didn’t like turning down power – so she rewarded her with a kiss.
“I love you, Dreya. You do the most wonderful things, sometimes.”
Mandalee hid a smile as Dreya’s marble skin flushed around her cheeks.
Kullos’ death knights were soon no more, and Dreya’s guards moved to the barrier. It was designed to kill any living thing that tried to leave, but her guards were not alive. Together, they reflected the power of the barrier back at itself, disrupting and finally collapsing it.
“I’ll leave them and my ghouls here to help,” Dreya offered.
“What about your pets?” Mandalee asked, referring to the dragons.
“I’ll have to return them, I’m afraid,” Dreya answered. “I can’t guarantee to keep them under control if I’m not here. They’re just as likely to kill our allies as anything else.”
Calling the dragons over, she told Jessica and Sara to join them on Catriona’s Rainbow Road.
“Trust me,” Cat urged them, seeing Sara hesitate. “It’s perfectly solid underfoot. I won’t let you fall.”
“Oh, don’t be such a scaredy-cat, Sara!” her more adventurous sister complained as Sara began to tentatively dismount. “Get your arse off that dragon!” Backing up her words with actions, Jessica vaulted down off hers, adding, “There’s a phrase I never thought I’d say!”
Not to be outdone, Sara took her own leap of faith and landed catlike on her feet.
“What about you?” Dreya asked Laethyn. “Are you keeping your dragon?”
“No,” he replied, dismounting, casually. “Send him back with the others. He was useful for a while, but have you any idea how much dragons eat? This is one pet I just can’t afford.”
Jessica began wagging her finger at the wizard, scolding him. “Oi, Mister! A dragon is for life not just for Christmas!”
All the Tempestrians looked blank.
“Seriously?” Jessica complained, throwing her hands up in the air in exasperation. To Sara, she grumbled, “I think we’ve made a huge mistake coming to live here, sis – no-one’s going to get my jokes!”
“Ignore my sister,” Sara advised the others. “She thinks she’s funny.”
Dreya opened a portal back to Phitonia and ordered the dragons through it.
“Well, I suppose I’d better get back to the war,” Laethyn decided, firing off his magic as he levitated down.
With him gone, Cat felt more at ease discussing what she now thought of as Guardian Business.
“Listen,” she began, “we have to leave the battlefield. I don’t like it, but this isn’t our place. You feel it, don’t you? Both of you?” she asked, looking pointedly at Mandalee and Dreya.
They both nodded.
“There’s something else we have to do,” Dreya replied, “otherwise none of this will matter.”
“More like, somewhere we need to be,” Mandalee suggested. “It’s like there are co-ordinates in my head, except they don’t make sense.”
“You’re right,” Cat agreed, “and I think you’ve been right all along about Daelen destroying the world. He doesn’t mean to, but as you always said, that makes no difference. I don’t know the details, but I’m getting impressions bleeding through Time, that this has happened before, more than once. And it didn’t end well. I also have the strangest feeling that this is the last chance. This time, White, Black and Red must work together with Daelen, or everything ends forever.”
*****
The previous night, Catriona had woken up to find she was alone in her tent. That was no problem. She knew her girlfriend had things to do and quite frankly, so did she. Pulling the Chronicles out of her pocket dimension, she began to study it in more depth. Reading between the lines of the note she had apparently left for herself under Calin’s Tower, it was telling her that the Guardianship must be formed before Daelen’s final battle with Kullos. Having done that, they surely needed to do something with their new powers, and that had to begin with understanding what those powers actually were.
But the battle was just hours away. How were they supposed to learn what to do and how to do it in so short a time? Cat was a quick study, but no-one was that quick.
*****
“I’ve got one of my ridiculous radical plans,” she told her friends. “There isn’t time to explain it, so you’re just going to have to trust me, OK?”
“Of course,” Dreya stated simply.
“Always,” Mandalee affirmed.
“What about us?” Sara asked. “We want to help, too, don’t we, Jess?”
“Totally,” her sister agreed. “What can we do?”
“You can either go and help with the fight below or come with us. It’s your choice,” Cat told them.
“Oh, we’re sticking with you,” Sara insisted.
“Too right!” her sister nodded.
The companions heard a growl from below, which Mandalee translated as, “Shyleen volunteers to stay.” The leopard knew she couldn’t help with what they needed to do – she was better suited to fighting out in the open.
“It seems she’s not the only animal volunteer,” the sorceress spoke up. “Look, Cat!”
The druidess didn’t need Dreya to point; she just followed the scream of agony and saw a small green snake removing her fangs from the leg of a renegade wizard.
“Pyrah!” Cat called out, delighted.
Her Ysirian friend had disappeared from the hold of the Dolphin, but that wasn’t unusual. Pyrah came and went as she pleased. She often vanished for long periods, only to reappear just as suddenly.
The snake spoke in Catriona’s mind, ‘This seems like a good place for a nest, and this lot are in my way. Besides, my fangs need sharpening, and there’s nothing like bone to do that.’
That was by far the most detailed communication Catriona had ever heard from Pyrah. Another side-effect of the enhanced sympathic link that seemed to have formed since becoming a Guardian, she supposed. She hadn’t heard the words, not like when she spoke to Shyleen in her language, but the concept images were so much sharper. She didn’t have time to think any more about it, but it did prove useful, as she found she was able to connect with Michael’s mind. It felt as if, by linking with her telepathically when they first met, he had formed a pathway that she could now sense.
Whatever the details, Cat was able to use it to reach out and ask, ‘Well, Mickey, is that enough help? Can you handle this battle alone now, without getting yourselves killed?’
She was reluctant to leave the battlefield when it could so readily shift the balance back to the enemy, but she knew the Guardians were needed elsewhere.
If Michael was surprised to hear her in his mind, it didn’t come through in his ‘voice’ as he replied, ‘To be honest, I think not, but I suppose we’ll just have to take as many with us as possible.’
“Keep holding them off!” Cat called down. “We’ll come back and help you as soon as we can!” she promised. She lowered her voice, so only her friends could hear. “Somehow.”
Just as they were about to leave, someone called out, “Mandalee! Wait!”
They turned to see Mandalee’s friend, Windell, charging up Catriona’s Rainbow Road, knocking aside any enemies that tried to grab him.
When he reached her side, he held out her Pureblade. “You should take it back. I’ve got a feeling you’re going to need every weapon you can get where you’re going.”
“I can’t leave you weaponless out here!” the assassin objected.
“Well, actually, I was hoping you might trade it in for a simpler sword that you can spare.”
She took the Pureblade and handed him the best regular sword she had with her. It still wasn’t a fair trade, though, and she told him so.
“Well, if it will make you happy, you could always give me something else, too,” he suggested with a twinkle in his eye.
“Like what?” Mandalee wondered.
In fact, his body language, the way he stepped forward with an unspoken question in his eyes, she thought she knew what he was suggesting. But he couldn’t mean that! Sure, they’d been getting along, and he’d seemed utterly unfazed by her gender identity.
When she’d brought it up, his only comment had been, “Of course, you’re a woman. Obviously, you’re a woman. Anybody who doubts that is an idiot. Why would you listen to idiots?”
But that surely didn’t mean Windell was interested in her! Still, after swallowing, nervously, she gave him a tentative smile and a nod, saying, “OK, if you really want to.”
He really did, so he moved closer, put his arm around her and kissed her full on the lips. She hesitated for a second or two as if she still couldn’t quite believe what was happening, but then she decided to do what she did best: stop thinking about it, trust her instincts and just go for it. Pulling him even closer, she kissed him back, kissing as she had never kissed anyone before.
It wasn’t love at first sight or any such ridiculous romantic notion. It was just two people who were attracted to each other seizing the moment, because they both knew how fragile life was, especially now. They were both fighters. They both danced with death every day of their lives, and if they waited until tomorrow, tomorrow might never come. And so, they kissed. The battle could wait, Kullos could wait, Time could wait. They were claiming this moment, this moment was theirs and nothing, no-one could take it from them.
At last, they broke the kiss, stepped apart and with a grin, Windell ran back down from the sky, calling back, “Seeya later!”
“Wow, girl!” Sara declared. “You have so pulled!”
“I’ll say!” her sister agreed. “I haven’t seen that much snogging since you and that elf boy!”
Cat lightly touched her friend’s arm, bringing her back to the present. “Sorry,” she whispered, “but we really need to go.”
Mandalee smiled and nodded resolutely. She was ready.
Acting on a final impulse, just to add to Michael’s irritation, as the five young women turned to leave, they waved at him and called out, “Bye, Mickey!”
He just growled in response and sheathed his sword in favour of bashing heads with his staff – it made a more satisfying sound.