Cat pointed out a section in the Chronicles:
To claim their Timeless state, the Guardians will create a place that can itself exist outside of Time, to which their powers shall be linked. If they are the right people, then one of them will have already created a place that can be adapted for this purpose:
A place that belongs to two worlds.
A place that belongs to none.
A place that is precious to all Three Guardians.
A place born of the greatest magic.
A place that does not exist.
*****
Of course, these Guardians were never going to operate from a dark underground base full of technology and flashing lights. They were a Faery sorceress, a half-Faery druid and a human Cleric of Nature. Together, they all had something in common: a love of nature.
“Dreya, close your micro-portal,” she instructed. Dreya complied. “We need to travel to Daelen’s Earth base, and we need to be there yesterday. Can you incorporate temporal co-ordinates into your magic?”
“Yesterday our time or Earth time?” Dreya checked.
“Earth time,” Cat clarified. “About six hours our time. Safer that way.”
“Why is that safer?” Mandalee asked.
“According to the Chronicles,” Cat explained, “time travel to non-specific co-ordinates is dangerous.”
Dreya nodded her agreement. “And it becomes exponentially more dangerous, the further you try to travel.”
“Should be only minimal risk for six hours,” Cat assured her friend.
Given that the risk of not doing it was the destruction of everything, Mandalee decided risk was relative.
Dreya concentrated and opened a Prismatic Sphere large enough to step through.
“What about those two?” Mandalee indicated Sara and Jessica. “We can’t just leave them.”
“We have to,” Cat countered, regretfully. “They can’t become Timeless, only we can. The temporal forces we’re going to unleash would kill them. Once we’re done, it might be OK, but not yet. Besides, we’re going to be Time travellers; if all goes well, we can be back in five minutes from their perspectives.”
“And if things don’t go well?” the assassin asked, fearing she already knew the answer.
It was Dreya who replied, “Then it really won’t matter where they are when the world ends.”
Trying to hide the fear that she might be lying, Mandalee called out to the Chetsuans, “Keep holding them off. We’ll be back in five minutes!”
The pair acknowledged that, and the Guardians stepped through the portal.
*****
Once on Earth, they closed the portal and headed for the only place that fitted what the Chronicles called for: Catriona’s Meadow.
It was on Earth, but it was also a recreation of Catriona’s Quarthonian childhood home on Tempestria. Two worlds. But since it was inside Daelen’s containment field, his entire base was cut off from the rest of Earth, so in a way, the meadow belonged to no world at all. It was precious to all Three Guardians because of their love of nature and because Catriona created it. Creating it had been a labour of love for Cat, and as best friend and girlfriend, the other two Guardians shared that connection of love. The greatest magic. But it was a recreation of Catriona’s childhood home that had itself been recreated by her Angel. A recreation, of a recreation, of a place that was long since gone. A place that did not exist.
Together, with the guidance of the Chronicles, the Three Guardians used the magic of all three flavours: wizard, druid and cleric, combined with higher planar energy from the Crystal Mage Staff. Cat believed the end of the world probably qualified as a ‘dire emergency of worldwide cataclysmic proportions.’ Working in harmony, they wove it all together and moved Catriona’s Meadow away from Earth, away from all worlds, into the void between the mortal plane and that of the gods. Their own private realm where only the Guardians could exist, at least until they learned how to invite others to visit.
For the first time, the Guardians were as they were always meant to be: Timeless. Here, they could plan their next move without the constraints of reality, of space, of time.
“Now that we’re here,” Cat began, “there’s something we need to learn to do because we need a consult.”
“We need a what?” Dreya wondered.
“Well, as I said, I think this is our one last chance to get it right, so it would help if we knew what went wrong before. Besides, we don’t have time to learn everything we need to know about being Guardians on our first day in the job.”
“But we’re Timeless now,” Mandalee objected. “Doesn’t that mean we have as much time as we like?” She paused. “Or am I making no sense, as usual?”
Cat gave her a wearied look. “I do wish you’d stop doubting yourself like that.”
“It was a perfectly reasonable question,” Dreya agreed, “and I think technically you’re right, but there’s a catch, isn’t there, Cat?”
“More than one, actually,” she confirmed. “For a start, Mandalee, we can’t heal while we’re Timeless because healing requires time. We’ll just stay in our injured state forever. I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t appeal to me. Besides, if we stay here, we’ll never know what happened to our world. Does it survive, or was it destroyed? Are our friends OK? What about Shyleen? You will never see her again if we don’t leave here.”
Mandalee was convinced. “So, what about this consult?” she wondered. “What’s that all about?”
“Another good question,” Dreya stated, encouragingly, “and this time I admit I don’t get it, either. Who can we consult? We’re the first Guardians on Tempestria.”
Cat smiled the way she always did when she got to the heart of one of her plans. “That’s where you’re wrong, Dreya. We’re not. We’re just the first Guardians on this Tempestria. I’ve told you; this has all happened before. Those Guardians formed too late to save their world, but they’re trying to help us save ours.”
“That’s what your letter said,” Mandalee remembered. “The one from under Calin’s Tower.”
“Exactly. That’s why I brought us here, so we can learn to open a Cosmic Rift to another reality, to where those other Guardians are. They’ve been Timeless for a long time, so they’ve had time to learn how to manipulate Time properly.”
“Never thought I’d hear someone use the word time four times in one sentence,” Dreya remarked with a wry smile. “Not one that made as much sense as that one, anyway.”
“Oh, I can do way better than four, but—”
“—But we don’t have time,” Mandalee finished. Catriona nodded. “Right, how do we do this?”
They sat down together under the oak tree, Catriona in the middle, with the Chronicles open in her lap.
As they studied what was written, they discussed it freely. While the Guardians knew they couldn’t stay in that Timeless place forever, it did feel good to be relieved of the constraints of Time…at least for a time.
At last, though, the Guardians were all clear on what to do. It was not so different from opening a Prismatic Sphere portal, except the destination co-ordinates were the ones in their heads – the ones that didn’t make sense. The true difficulty lay in other aspects of the magic.
Opening a portal to another reality required more magic than Three Guardians had access to. It needed six. The co-ordinates made no sense because they were partway between the two realities. They had to take the Cosmic Rift that far, to that exact no-place, trusting that the Three on the other side would do the same and there hadn’t been some miscommunication or mistranslation. The other catch was that they couldn’t do it while Timeless because the magic required a Temporal element. In theory, they could choose any time and place as a starting point – it could make no difference to the other Guardians. In practice, though, there was only one possible choice: If they were going to stop Daelen, then they needed to be where the action was, on StormClaw. The Cosmic Rift would be stable for no more than an hour. That was the only hour in history when six Guardians could possibly work together to save the world. Therefore, it was decided that they needed to be on StormClaw just about thirty minutes before Daelen arrived, while their past selves were in the thick of the fighting. The idea of being in two places at once was mind-blowing for the three companions, but they knew they had to get over it quickly. They were the Guardians; this was what they did, and they had a job to do.
*****
A portal took them to their destination on time, give or take a few minutes. Once there, they each took a few deep breaths to calm their nerves and began to work as one to open the first and only Cosmic Rift there could ever be.
It flickered a few times, as they fought the rules of their reality that decreed this was impossible, but gradually, reality gave way to their need, and the fabric tore open. The Guardians just prayed they could stitch it up again afterwards. The portal grew into a tunnel beyond time and space as they knew it, stretching in a direction for which they had no name until it encountered a force pushing back at its extreme end. Another identical tunnel was close by, and unknowable laws of physics decreed that some kind of repulsion force came into play, trying to prevent two separate realities from touching when they were never meant to. The three young women strained with the effort, imagining their counterparts doing the same. This had to work. It was the only chance for Tempestria. For the sake of everyone and everything that they cared about, this had to work, and no stupid cosmic forces were going to stop them.
Just when they were on the verge of exhaustion, the forces were finally overcome, and the two tunnels merged into one: the Cosmic Rift was complete.
Through the tunnel came a voice that sounded a lot like Catriona. “Hello? Are you the Guardians of Tempestria?”
“Er, yes, we are,” Cat replied, a little uncertainly. “And I’m guessing, so are you.”
“Cat! Perfect! Hello, me!” the voice called out greeting. “The Mandalee and Dreya on my side say ‘hi’ too, but they can’t spare the magic needed to send their voices through the Rift. They’re busy stopping this bubble of reality from collapsing. Look, I need to ask you something, and I know it’s a hell of a way to start a conversation, but there’s no polite way to say this: your world hasn’t blown up yet, has it?”
“No,” Cat assured her counterpart. “The fireworks don’t start for another half hour or so. I’m calling because—”
“—because you need information, to gain knowledge,” her counterpart finished, a touch of humour in her voice. “That’s how this all started for us, isn’t it? We just had to know. Quite right, of course.”
“Can you tell us everything we need to know?” Cat asked. “Tell us how this all went wrong before, so we can avoid making the same mistakes.”
“We can do better than tell you,” came the voice. A beam of light seemed to travel through the Cosmic Rift, resolving into images in the air. It was like one of the movies their Chetsuan friends had taken them to on Earth, Cat realised, except it didn’t require a screen. “Now, I suggest you all sit comfortably while I show you how Tempestria – my Tempestria – came to an end.”
*****
Time for another interruption from yours truly, gentle reader. Arshes Megane – remember me? Your humble narrator? Well, in the interests of expediency, I’m not going to share the entire ‘movie’, along with the many asides, jokes, and misunderstandings it contained. Instead, if you’ll forgive me, I will simply summarise myself.
In truth, the ‘movie’ was more of a series of clips and scenes – edited highlights, if you will – focussing on crucial moments on their Tempestria.
The first such scene began with the caption: The Last Days of Tempestria.
Catriona had spent two days running around Compton as a Trickster and fell into a demon trap set by Mandalee. However, on their world, she was trapped only once. From Mandalee’s perspective, she’d wound up some girl, in revenge for wasting her time, but that’s all. Nothing particularly memorable. She wasn’t the first person to fall into one of her demon traps, nor would she be the last. It would be several years before they met again.
In time, Mandalee came to the attention of Justaria, Triumvirate Representative for the Balance. As a firm believer in promoting both diversity and promising young talent, she hired the young demon hunter’s services a few times. Mandalee was grateful for the opportunity and developed a deep respect for the woman’s fair-minded leadership.
Meanwhile, young Catriona had her first encounter with Dreya the Dark, seeking access to her library. Dreya was intrigued with her druid magic and agreed. They developed a positive professional relationship and eventually even a friendship.
Then Justaria went missing and given their separate connections to her, Catriona and Mandalee both chose to investigate, and so they met not only each other but Daelen StormTiger, too. The shadow warrior had also been looking into these strange disappearances, ever since he learned that higher planar energy was involved.
The movie scenes continued to show events very similar to those the three companions experienced on their Tempestria, except some of the details were different. Mandalee and Cat travelled overseas together and got to know each other, but while they were friends, it was never particularly deep or meaningful to either. Cat never knew about Mandalee’s gender identity issues – Mandalee could pass so well by now, and it never entered Catriona’s mind that she was unhappy with who she was. At the same time, Mandalee grew to like having a friend who simply saw her as a woman and she didn’t want to risk that, so she never told her. At least, not before the world ended.
At the climax of this first act, there was a final confrontation between Kullos and Daelen, just as in my world. The crucial difference being that the institution of the Guardians had not happened. The movie showed Catriona unlocking the security on her staff, much as I described earlier, but she didn’t have the Chronicles. In effect, then, gentle reader, she held a key with no idea what lock it was supposed to fit into.
There was nothing more she could do, so she focussed on the battle ahead, believing there would be time to explore the purpose of her staff when it was all over. She had no way of knowing that later would be too late because when it was all over, it would be all over for her whole world.
The battle against Kullos’ forces raged, and Daelen fought hard, sapping his energy in the process until finally, he slipped away to fight Kullos alone as he always intended. At first, they fought inside the fortress itself, but Daelen managed to open a portal to StormClaw.
Kullos was too powerful to fight alone, and he managed to take the battle beyond the containment field that surrounded his grounds. Daelen was weakening, but with a final valiant effort, he grabbed Kullos’ dimensional control device and used Heaven’s Surrender. The Wish barrier could only contain the blast temporarily, and there was nothing anyone could do as the power escaped, killing Kullos and Daelen alike, and devastating Tempestria.
At first, there were survivors, including Cat, Dreya and Mandalee. The Heaven’s Surrender blast pretty much ended the fighting. Whose side they were on suddenly seemed a moot point, given the end of the world. The peace didn’t last long, however. Soon, people began to turn on each other, but it wasn’t just former enemies. Friends and family were killing, maiming, torturing each other without thought or reason or remorse. Others were losing memories, entirely at random. It made no sense.
Cat managed to find her staff in the wreckage of Kullos’ former base, and as a bonus, she also found the Nameless Book. Laethyn, now dead, had brought it to the battle, hoping to use the brute force of Daelen’s beam cannon blasts to open it. It wasn’t enough power for that, but Heaven’s Surrender was, so all of its defences were now down and the conditions of Guardianship void. Catriona gathered her two friends, and together they became Guardians.
The containment field of Daelen’s StormClaw island had so far kept the destruction out. Therefore, the Earth base was also intact. The Guardians created their base of operations outside Time, from Catriona’s Meadow. They learned about Time Intervention and analysed Daelen’s battle against Kullos. Doing so, they discovered the terrible truth: Kullos had been infected by the essence of IT – that was why he changed from Heroic Champion to Paranoid Villain. Kullos had, in turn, invented Heaven’s Surrender, a weapon of true destruction. IT was loose in the world, turning life against life, while IT unmade the world. Nothing could stop IT.
Even as they showed the movie to their counterparts, those other Guardians were actively maintaining the containment field around their StormClaw. Otherwise, all connected worlds would be unmade. IT could even reach through the Rift and undo everything the Guardians were trying to achieve: the Salvation of Tempestria.
Not their Tempestria, gentle reader, for that was already lost. A new one. This Tempestria. My Tempestria.
The Catriona from their universe (‘Alt-Cat’, if you will) had one of her ridiculous radical plans: suspend Tempestria in its pre-Heaven’s Surrender state, create a copy and tinker with the Timeline to prevent IT being released. This would count as Creation magic and was therefore impossible, at least under normal circumstances. However, the presence of IT was part of the problem, which made IT part of the solution: In the end, all failed Timelines would be unmade, as if they had never existed, leaving only one as if it had always been so. It wasn’t just cheating, it was throwing the rulebook on the fire, but the chaotic power of IT meant the standard rules of order had been suspended.
Creation magic required a lot of power. Fortunately, there had just been a massive explosion of higher planar energy: Heaven’s Surrender. Even so, there was sufficient power for only nine major Timeline Interventions in the new world.
The Black and White Guardians each identified two crisis points where killing Daelen might change things. The Red Guardian didn’t think that was the answer and wanted to work co-operatively. In the end, they agreed to a compromise: The power would be divided into nine equal portions, three each. Each Guardian could use two parts for individual attempted Interventions, keeping a total of three portions in reserve for a final co-operative effort if the other attempts failed. To maintain the connection between worlds, Alt-Cat linked her Crystal Mage Staff with that of her counterpart. This had the side-effect that Cat would be aware that something was going on with Time and would be informed of the Interventions as they happened around her. Alt-Cat hoped this would help her get slightly ahead of the game.