Catriona used her stoneshaper spell to seal up the fortress so no-one could follow them, although she couldn’t rule out the possibility of there being other ways to enter. Sara and Jessica had their laser guns charged and ready, appointing themselves as those who would guard the Guardians. Then began the hunt for Daelen, Cat taking the lead in leopard form to silently sniff out the shadow warrior’s scent trail. The fortress was dark, lit only by a few flaming wall-mounted torches and candles in chandeliers, creating a very gothic feel to the place.
Mandalee decided to use her Cat’s Eyes spell. “It’s all very well for you to see in the dark,” she told her friend, “but it would help if the rest of us could, too.”
The fortress was vast. Without Catriona’s shapeshifting abilities, the girls could have searched the stronghold for hours without finding the right trail. Stone statues of various hellish creatures stood beneath tapestries and works of art from their world and others, from ages past and present.
As the companions followed the leopard, the only sounds were the soft jingle of the assassin’s weapons and the whisper of Dreya’s robes. Both she and Mandalee had instinctively withdrawn inside their hoods – a habit they both shared when preparing to face an unknown situation. Mandalee wondered what else they had in common, besides the obvious. The catlike Chetsuans were as silent as ghosts.
Catriona hadn’t spent much time in leopard form and was still getting used to processing her feline senses. The scent wasn’t as sharp as she would have expected, leading her to suspect they might not be matching Daelen’s route perfectly. She was sure they were going in the right general direction, though, which was all that mattered.
Dreya was surprised to find that there were no guards in the area, apart from a dozen that Daelen had killed with his sword, near the entrance. Perhaps Kullos could not trust anyone to be close to him, and in his arrogance, he probably thought it unnecessary. His own powers were all he needed. There being nothing to do, the sorceress began to think about what she would have done in his place.
None of them noticed a handful of obsidian hellhound statues slowly and silently get down from their platforms, eyes glowing red.
*****
After a while, Dreya felt compelled to share her thoughts, commenting to her friends, “Y’know, I’ve been thinking, this is really sloppy. If I were Kullos, I would’ve at least left a few guard dogs around the place. Something with teeth and claws that could cut through armour, and hides that could deflect dragon claws. I’d probably make them magic resistant, too,” the sorceress continued.
That’s when the hellhounds attacked.
Dreya always travelled with magical defences, but the lead hound broke through them like they weren’t there, biting into her left leg with vicious teeth. Her scream alerted the others, but it was too late for Mandalee. She was knocked to the ground, teeth flashing dangerously close to her throat; she thrust her right arm in the way and cried out as the hound’s teeth rendered her flesh, even through the combat suit. Only Catriona and the Chetsuans with their catlike reflexes were quick enough to spring out of the way, so the hellhounds only nipped the furry tip of a leopard’s tail. Sara and Jessica fired their weapons, but the beams just bounced off their hides. They hastily holstered them, lest they kill their friends by mistake. Dreya’s prophecy about magic-resistance firmly in her mind, the druidess elected to remain in leopard form to fight. She was better armed this way – after all, the cat was nature’s ultimate killing machine.
Mandalee didn’t have the option of teeth, but she did have some serious claws. Her dragonclaw blade flashed into her left hand in an instant, which she raked across the hellhound’s flank. The damage to the creature was minimal, but it did cause enough pain for it to whirl its head to try and bite at its source. That gave the assassin enough leverage to shift her weight and kick the mutt across the room. It hit the wall with a thud and a yelp. It recovered quickly, but the assassin was faster, standing and levelling her single-handed crossbow. She knew she would only get one shot – with her damaged right hand there was no way she could put a second bolt in place. If she got it right, one shot was all she would need, and if she didn’t…well, all her troubles would be over very quickly after that. She forced herself to hold back and wait.
At last, the hellhound sprang, and the bolt fired. The creature never even cried out, dying instantly. Unfortunately, Mandalee didn’t realise it was a stone creature in its dormant state. It petrified in mid-air and momentum carried it on to knock Mandalee to the ground once more. Landing on top of her, the air rushed from her lungs, and she passed out. The statue teleported back to its rightful place, but after a few seconds, the magic respawned it. Once again, it advanced on the party.
Jessica and Sara had abandoned guns for swords, ferociously attacking the creatures. They were holding them at bay and had so far escaped serious injury, but they couldn’t do this forever. One serious bite and it could all be over.
“Whose bright idea was it to come to this world, anyway?” Sara panted, delivering a killing blow.
“Sorry, love,” Jessica replied, continuing her frenzied attack, exploiting an opening and scoring a kill of her own. It did nothing more than give them a moment to breathe, however, as the statues reanimated once more. “Fighting to save our new home sounded so good when we said it. Now we’re here getting our arses kicked, I’ve got to say, I’m not as keen as I was.”
Meanwhile, Catriona was on the offensive, claws flashing in the torchlight. The hellhound was no match for a leopard’s agility. Time and again, its teeth found only fur and no flesh. Unfortunately, she knew the hellhound wouldn’t tire; it could fight all day and all night – she couldn’t. Besides, they needed to get to Daelen and Kullos before it was too late.
Dreya the Dark was not faring so well. Her best magic seemed to do nothing more than make it pause for a moment. Blood magic was of no help. Even her power words – DIE, FREEZE, BURN – had proven ineffective. She summoned a trio of skeletal warriors, but the hellhound had them in pieces in no time. She was about to do the unthinkable and call her dagger to hand, thereby admitting her magic had been defeated, when she saw what had happened to the ones the others had killed. Realising where the hounds had come from, she unfolded her power word, “STONE.” The hound turned back to a statue before her eyes. Then, just to make sure, she added, “SHATTER,” and the statue exploded, spraying stone fragments in all directions.
She was just turning to see if her girlfriend needed any help when the impossible happened: the stone fragments rushed back together to form a whole creature again, only this time bits of it were stuck in the wrong places, making it all the more horrifying, but no less deadly as it came at her again. Dreya flexed her muscle to bring her dagger to hand from where it was hidden up her sleeve. It seemed there was no way magic could stop these creatures, but just then, an alarm went off in her head.
“Hold on,” the sorceress muttered to herself, eyes narrowing, “something’s not right here.” A theory formed in her mind, but did she have the courage to put it to the test? She quickly decided her dagger wasn’t going to be much help anyway, so her best chance lay in trusting her magical instincts. If she died, at least she would die in the embrace of magic. There was honour in that, she decided.
Mandalee came around just in time to see Dreya the Dark throw her dagger away and calmly kneel before the hellhound, exposing her throat to the predator.
“Do what you will,” whispered the sorceress. “You can’t hurt me.” The hellhound rushed at her…and straight through her like a ghost. The insubstantial hellhound turned to stone once more and teleported back to its pedestal, showing no signs of returning to life.
“I knew it!” Dreya cried out triumphantly, getting to her feet. “Everyone stop fighting; they’re not real!”
Trusting her lover implicitly, despite having not seen what had just happened, Catriona returned to her natural form and ceased all attempts to defend herself. The hellhound sprang and vanished. The others did likewise.
Mandalee patched herself up with a quick dose of magic and painkilling herbs, and Catriona used the last of the party’s drinking water to heal Dreya’s leg enough to stem the blood loss and allow her to walk.
“I refuse to ask how you did that,” Mandalee huffed, stubbornly. Then, after a moment, her resolve broke. “How did you do that?”
“It suddenly hit me,” Dreya explained, “how peculiar it was that Kullos should have left the exact same guards that I was thinking of. When the hellhound shattered and put itself back together all wrong, I realised there was no way physical magic would have got it wrong. It had to be illusion. We’ve got to keep a tight hold of our imaginations. Whatever we think up will probably appear and attack us. Keep telling yourselves: there’s nothing here. Nothing at all. And if something does appear, remember it can only hurt us if we believe it’s real.”
“Why do you suppose Kullos’ magic went wrong?” Sara wondered.
“The trouble with interactive illusion magic,” Dreya explained, “is that it’s tough to maintain if your mind is distracted. My guess is Daelen is causing him a few problems.
“Then it’s begun,” Mandalee said ominously.
“Come on, quick!” Cat insisted. “We haven’t much time!”
She shifted back to leopard form, and they set off again.
*****
They reached the uppermost floor of a large inner antechamber with a high ceiling that clearly served as Kullos’ throne room. Below them, a narrow corridor led away from the chamber, in the direction they had come, which made sense of the slightly muffled scent trail Cat had been following. Daelen must have taken the lower route.
There was a portal shimmering in the centre of the room, right on top of Kullos’ throne, and it was closing. Even as the companions ran down the spiral stairs, Cat knew they’d never make it. She shifted to her falcon form and flew down, desperately, but even she couldn’t make it in time and was forced to execute a muscle-wrenching stall in midair, lest she got stuck partway through the portal when it closed – a most unpleasant death. In the middle of her turn and twist, she felt something pop. The pain almost made her black out, but she fought to stay conscious. She could feel her grip on her bird form slipping away and she changed back a good twenty feet from the floor. She crash-landed with a violent impact that knocked the air from her lungs and broke several of her spell component pouches, spilling out their contents. She assessed the damage before attempting to get up. Coming on top of the injuries she had sustained in the battle, it was serious. Her left arm was useless, and she didn’t even want to think about the reason for the twinge in her back that jolted her with every step.
When her friends reached her, Dreya, scared out of her wits by what she had just seen, was livid.
“Of all the stupid, idiotic and downright dangerous stunts I’ve seen, that really was beyond belief! What in the name of all the levels of hell did you think you were going to achieve?”
“I had to reach the portal,” Cat replied, weakly. “I knew you couldn’t make it, so I had to try. Don’t you realise? Daelen is on the other side of that thing, fighting Kullos alone. He’s got to be stopped! Whatever happens to me is worth the risk. I haven’t had time to fully figure out why, but I trust my instincts.”
Dreya was unsympathetic. “If you’d stopped for a second, I could have told you that I can trace the destination of a portal even after it shuts. Through my extensive studies, I found there was a residual trace of magical disturbance, unique to the destination, that takes a few minutes to fade.”
“Alright then, get to it!” Cat ordered. The druidess regretted speaking to her girlfriend that way, but time was short. She couldn’t shake the feeling that they were just moments from disaster and only they could prevent it. And she hurt like hell. “Just make a micro-portal – big enough to analyse what’s on the other side but too small to be seen.”
“But surely we know where he’s gone anyway,” Jessica pointed out.
“Yeah,” Mandalee agreed. “His base on StormClaw.”
“I have a feeling it might not be as simple as that,” Cat disputed, ruefully. “I’ve been trying to train Daelen to think strategically and judging by the way he killed those guards with his sword rather than waste his powers, I’m afraid he’s started to listen.”
Turning to Mandalee, the druidess asked, “Can you do anything? I’ve got nothing left to work with to heal myself, and I don’t think I could manipulate my spell components with one hand, anyway.”
“I won’t lie to you,” the cleric replied, fuming at her reckless actions, “you’ve really hurt yourself this time.”
Come to that, she didn’t exactly feel marvellous herself. She’d taken a few knocks, scrapes and lacerations in the heat of the battle, and despite her healing, the damage to her right arm wasn’t as superficial as it looked. She didn’t dare remove her body armour to find out – she was worried it might be the only thing holding her together. Dreya had fared better until the hellhounds attacked, but her leg was terribly mangled. The dark sorceress concealed things very well, but Mandalee was pretty sure her expert eye could detect injuries that the sorceress would never admit to having sustained.
“I can’t heal you completely at this point,” Mandalee continued. “Healing these kinds of injuries too fast does more harm than good. I can’t even get your arm working properly.”
“Mandalee,” Cat growled, “stop telling me what you can’t do and tell me what you can do!”
Mandalee was equally blunt. “I can get your arm working well enough for you to use your magic and maybe dull the pain a bit, but that’s all. First, I need to put your shoulder back in place – it’s dislocated.”
“Do it.”
“It’s going to hurt,” she warned.
Catriona glared at her best friend, and gritted her teeth. “It already hurts, just do it!”
Mandalee set about her limited ministrations, warning her friend, “Don’t even think about any shapeshifting until you’re properly healed. Some damage can never be fixed.”
Cat promised to obey.
By the time Mandalee had finished, Dreya had already opened her micro-portal. They couldn’t see it, but the Three Guardians could sense it. Acting on a sudden idea, Dreya asked Jessica if she had her phone with her.
Puzzled by the unexpected question, Jessica pulled it out of her pocket and looked at it. “Battery’s a bit low, but it should be OK for a few hours, why?”
“I just thought, when we stop Kullos, it might be useful if we could prove it to that lot out there when we return. Capturing it all on video seems like a good way of doing that. May I?”
Jessica handed it over with a shrug. “Sure, why not? It’s not like I can check my Twitter feed here anyway, is it, love?”
Before they could do any more, a pair of musclebound human warriors rounded a corner on their patrol. When they spotted the intruders, they each drew a formidable-looking sword and advanced.
“They’re not illusions, are they?” Jessica checked.
“Not unless you’ve been daydreaming about fit guys with huge weapons, Jess,” Sara quipped.
The others stared at her.
“That sounded better in my head,” she conceded with a golden blush.
“Leave the jokes to me, eh, Sara dear?” her sister advised. Turning to the Guardians, she urged them not to waste their powers. “Leave them to us.”
Sara agreed, “You just do your thing, and we’ll guard your backs.” The warriors were trying to intimidate them with fancy swordplay, flicking their blades from one hand, spinning wildly in the air, only to catch them deftly in the other. Locking eyes with her sister, Sara suggested, “Raiders?”
Jessica nodded. “You read my mind.”
Nonchalantly, the pair drew their guns and shot them down.
“Nice shooting,” Mandalee commended them, “but those guns make a lot of noise, and these walls echo a lot, so if there are any more around here…”
She didn’t need to finish her sentence, as a dozen more guards came running.
“Oops!” the Chetsuans cried together.
“Want to borrow my dragonclaw blades?” the assassin asked.
“No need,” Sara shook her head, as she and her sister holstered their guns once more.
“We’ve got our own,” Jessica added.
With that, they both flicked their hidden knives into their hands and charged.
With full confidence in their bodyguards, the others got back down to Guardian business.
“There’s something strange about the portal,” Dreya reported, “or rather its destination. It’s definitely StormClaw, but…” she trailed off, not knowing how to finish the sentence. “Mandalee,” she prompted, “what do you sense from nature on the other side?” The sorceress knew her girlfriend was in too much pain to sense much of anything right now.
“Time,” Mandalee replied. “Time is out of sync. Not as much as Earth, not a different speed, but…slightly in the past. Just about an hour.”
Dreya swore. “He knew the place would be empty at that time because I mentioned how long I’ve had our Chetsuan friends in our world.”
“You couldn’t have known, Dreya,” Cat reassured her. “Even you can’t anticipate everything.”
Mandalee realised Daelen’s plan. “I forgot he had crude time travel. I would have just blundered through a portal to StormClaw as it is now, by which time the battle would be over. Too late for us to interfere. But does that mean everything’s OK? I mean, the world obviously hasn’t been destroyed.”
Cat shook her head. “Doesn’t work like that. Maybe the world wasn’t destroyed because we did something, and if we don’t figure out what that is and do it…”
“…then goodbye to everything,” Mandalee finished.
“This is where your ridiculous radical plan comes in, isn’t it?” Dreya realised.
Cat nodded. “He’s changed the rules. This isn’t a current crisis anymore, it’s an Illegal Time Intervention. An hour in the past or a thousand years makes no difference. As Guardians, we can’t allow that kind of interference.”
Dreya remembered reading about this kind of scenario in the Chronicles. If the world on which they stood were destroyed in the past, then this would be an aberrant Timeline. With the walls of reality so weakened, the cosmos would be wide open to an incursion by the chaotic power of IT.
“What can we do?” Mandalee asked. This kind of thing wasn’t her forte. She needed something she could stick her blades into.
Before she could reply, an alarm sounded, and more guards came running. The Chetsuans rushed forward to take them on, taking the battle into the narrow corridor where they could hold a line with just two of them.
Trusting in their ability to look after themselves, Catriona asserted, “Time is on our side now. We can make it work for us, but first, we need to create our new base of operations.”