As the three companions watched, the movie introduced the next scene with the caption: White Intervention 1.
The White Guardian used one portion of energy to partially manifest as a white glowing image in our Tempestria, appearing to Mandalee and hiring her to kill Daelen. The scene flashed forward to the moment Daelen was weakened and vulnerable, having touched Catriona’s staff. The White Assassin burst into view, and Cat tried to block her with ice and restrain her with the plants. But Mandalee was a Cleric of Nature, so all she had to do was ask the plants to let her go, and they did. Then, using her super-speed, she ran around Catriona’s ice wall and killed the shadow warrior where he lay. But shadow warriors take a long time to die. They are light in a box and even when the mortal shell is damaged beyond repair, their light essence can remain viable for some time. Aden felt the death of his clone and saw his chance. Rushing to the scene, he absorbed Daelen’s essence into himself, recombining. The shadow warrior killed both Mandalee and Catriona, destroying any chance for Guardians in that world. In the final battle, Aden got his hands on Heaven’s Surrender and tried to detonate it while using Kullos’ control device to re-Ascend, but Kullos held him back, determined to take him with him as he died. That world was unmade.
The following caption read: Black Intervention 1.
Learning from the White Guardian’s mistake, the Black Guardian used one portion of energy to partially manifest as an apparition to Dreya, as a young child. She told her that if she worked on her magic with all of her being, then one day, she would suffer the bullying and taunting no longer. She would grow to become the Greatest Mage Who Ever Lived, but to achieve her ultimate goal, she would have to kill Daelen StormTiger and take his power for herself. Then, even shadow warriors would be no threat. The scene flashed forward to the moment Daelen’s dark clone came to her Tower, seeking to take her as his pet. Dreya felt compelled to kill Daelen and cared not at all which one. Aden, weakened from his latest battle against his other half, could not stand against her. Once he was dead, she made sure to drain every last drop of higher planar energy. That made her more powerful than ever. She planned to offer her ‘assistance’ to the other Daelen as equal partners against Kullos. When Kullos was no longer a threat, if Daelen was still alive, she would kill him herself, and drain him of all remaining power, ending the danger of the shadow warriors forever. But Daelen didn’t trust her and expected betrayal, so when the moment came, Daelen was able to use his little-used temporal powers to keep her out of it. Kullos was far too powerful for just one side of Daelen to handle and simply used Heaven’s Surrender himself, so the world was unmade.
The third caption read: White Intervention 2.
What the White Guardian took from this, was that Daelen’s misguided heroic nature was the problem. He knew he didn’t have the power to take on Kullos without recombining with his other half. Yet he did it anyway. What would his dark clone do in that position? Using her second portion of higher planar energy, then, the White Guardian appeared to Mandalee while she was sailing on the Dolphin. She told her that shortly she would have a second opportunity to stop Daelen destroying the world. Flash forward a few hours, and Mandalee received a sympathic cry for help from Catriona over on the StormChaser. Pyrah, her Ysirian snake, had bitten Daelen, and he was going to die. Catriona did everything she could to get the two ships together, but once there, Mandalee refused to help Cat heal him. She was almost persuaded by Catriona’s appeal to her cleric side, but the assassin in her won out. For the sake of the world, they had to let him die.
Cat was devastated, knowing Daelen’s death was her fault – Pyrah would never have been there if not for her – but she could do nothing alone. The White Guardian reasoned that Daelen’s essence was no use to Aden this time because the venom would kill him, too, but just in case, Mandalee weighed down Daelen’s body and threw it overboard. Aden was no hero, and he wasn’t stupid enough to face Kullos’ growing power, so he simply opened a portal and ran away to another world. The White Guardian had hoped that Kullos, upon hearing about this, would have no reason to use Heaven’s Surrender. She assumed he would simply use his control device to re-Ascend, never to bother Tempestria again, but she underestimated the depth of his malice. He detonated Heaven’s Surrender and quickly re-Ascended to avoid the blast. Once again, Tempestria was unmade.
Up came the fourth caption: Black Intervention 2.
The Black Guardian decided that the recombined version of Daelen needed to die and told her counterpart that there was a golden opportunity to do that if she did not kill Aden at her Black Tower. Not quite. She just absorbed enough of his power to make him run to his other half and recombine. Dreya met with the recombined Daelen on the eve of the final battle. He was wary, but he recognised her power and appreciated her restraint in not killing Aden when she had the chance, so he agreed to discuss terms with her. At the moment Kullos’ death knights attacked, however, Dreya seized her opportunity. With the element of surprise on her side, Dreya drew power from her own undead guards, and their combined power was enough to kill him. Absorbing his power, she took his place in the final battle and went after Kullos herself. However, lacking Daelen’s experience, she didn’t recognise the Heaven’s Surrender device until it was too late. Kullos detonated it, and although Dreya stopped him from getting away, the world was unmade yet again.
Next caption: Red Interventions 1&2.
The Red Guardian didn’t believe killing Daelen was the answer. She had allowed the other two Guardians to go first because her plans needed more preparation. By incorporating a kind of memory of their failures into her staff and linking it with its counterpart in her new world, echoes of these critical moments would resonate and help this world’s Catriona to understand what was going on. The Red Guardian believed it was imperative that the Guardians be formed before the final battle against Kullos, so that they could intervene and save the world both with and from Daelen.
However, before that could happen, her plan lay much further back in history. Instead of two partial manifestations, she created a Mirror Image self-copy in the new world. After ageing up her appearance, the copy travelled back in time almost a thousand years, to when Daelen had first been split in two. The Red Guardian imbued this magical construct with the knowledge of the importance of her mission but also gave her free will to act independently. This was for practical reasons as much as moral ones – she couldn’t maintain a connection across both universes and back in time.
Calling herself Rose, the sentient copy’s primary objective was to leave clues that would help Catriona in the future. Secondary to that, she sought to gain knowledge and hopefully sow seeds that would help Catriona to gently influence him more when they eventually met.
She didn’t expect to fall in love.
The very first time he told her he felt the same way, she had to share everything, at least about herself. He didn’t care that she was really made of magic – he was light in a box. The Red Guardian believed the magic would sustain Rose for no more than five years, but when Rose told the shadow warrior, he took her to live with him on Earth. That would give them two decades together. During her time on Earth, she achieved one of her assigned Time Interventions – leaving the note for Catriona underneath Daelen’s training centre and leaving clues to point towards it in her fiction writing.
At last, her time was up, and she had to say goodbye to Daelen. He understood something of the perils of Time travel, and before she left, he gave her a device that would wipe part of his memories. He would remember Rose, and he would recognise her style of magic in Catriona, but he wouldn’t remember precisely who Rose was or have any foreknowledge of the future. This affected Daelen’s reaction to Cat in the future because she subconsciously reminded him of Rose.
Returning to Tempestria, Rose placed another note under what would become Calin’s Tower. This used up the Red Guardian’s second Intervention, but Rose wasn’t done. Not quite.
In addition to those two main Interventions, she still had just enough life left to make one further tiny tweak to the Timeline. Something so small that required almost no effort: she moved a tiny little spider slightly to one side, so it brushed past Catriona’s ear at a crucial moment in Compton. Since Cat didn’t like spiders, it made her jump, just as she was using what at the time was still new magic. Thanks to that distraction, she ended up stuck in a demon trap for a second time, this time naked and looking like Jacob. This precipitated Cat’s second meeting with Mandalee, which was sure to be a memorable encounter.
None of this affected their free will. All she did was move a spider slightly, but it had a profound effect. Mandalee and Cat became close friends much earlier. This small action changed so much, yet still it was not enough.
The Cosmic Rift represented the Final Intervention for all Three Guardians, requiring every last drop of higher planar energy just to sustain it for one hour, half of which was already spent.
At the end of the movie, a final caption read: All of the Guardians’ actions have helped guide events to create the current version of Tempestria, but without further Intervention, nothing will change. Tempestria will still be unmade.
*****
“What do we need to do?” Cat asked.
Her counterpart explained, “You, the Guardians, need to help Daelen and also stop him. Fight alongside him against Kullos, so Kullos cannot take the battle away from StormClaw. It must happen there.”
Dreya broke into the conversation at that point.
“I have a question,” she ventured. “Obviously, I’m new to how Time Interventions work, but logically, assuming our world’s still here tomorrow, since your world will never have existed, all three of us here will have to nip back in Time and do what you did, to maintain current events, yes?”
“You’re right, of course,” Alt-Cat agreed. “Obviously, for you and Mandalee, things are simple enough. For Cat, it’s somewhat more involved, but if she’s anything like me, loving Daelen will be no hardship.”
“Wow, this is awkward!” Mandalee remarked.
“Why?” queried Alt-Cat’s voice through the rift. “What’s the problem?”
“Well, I don’t wish to sound possessive,” Dreya replied acidly, “but I don’t think it’s unreasonable for me to be unhappy at the prospect of my girlfriend having a relationship with someone else!”
“Girlfriend?” Alt-Cat sounded puzzled. “Wait – you’re together in your world?”
“Of course we are!” Catriona insisted. “How can you not know that?”
“We can’t see the whole of Time, as you’ll soon discover, only certain key points in history, and love is unpredictable by its very nature. Look, I can’t tell you how to live your lives. I even gave my copy free will, so I’m not about to take yours away. You’re all resourceful people, I’m sure you can work together to find another way to achieve the same results. That’s the key to Time Intervention: the story may change, but the ending stays the same, yet sometimes moving a tiny spider an inch to the left is enough to change the world. You can worry about tomorrow’s problems later. Right now, we need to focus on preserving your Tempestria, so that you have the luxury of a later. It’s too late for our world, but if yours survives and you remember what we did to save it, then even if we are unmade, we still mattered. We made a difference. We existed. Even IT can’t take that away from us.”
“Can you teach us the magic we need?” Cat asked.
That was why she had wanted this consult in the first place. She believed they could spend an eternity in Catriona’s Meadow and still have no idea what they were supposed to do. Far better to spend a few minutes talking to an expert who could help direct their focus.
“No need,” her counterpart insisted. “This isn’t about learning some specific secret spell. Just trust yourselves. All that matters is that Kullos dies today, there on your StormClaw. No escape, no portal, no Ascending, and no Heaven’s Surrender. Only then can your world be safe.”
“I don’t suppose you can come over to help us a bit more hands-on?” Mandalee wondered, without hope.
“Can’t risk it. We have no way of knowing the effect of having more than one version of anyone, let alone a Guardian, in the same place at the same time. Doing that with Time magic is strain enough on the cosmos but trying it with a Cosmic Rift is just asking for everything to collapse. I can send an object, though. That’s safe enough. Here, catch!”
Tumbling through the Rift, came another Crystal Mage Staff.
“Thanks! Got it!” Cat declared, speaking a little too soon as, despite her best efforts to catch the staff, it promptly clattered to the ground. “More or less,” she finished, sheepishly.
“You dropped it, didn’t you?” Alt-Cat deadpanned. If they could have seen her, the Guardians were sure she would have been rolling her eyes.
“Yes, I did,” Cat admitted. “This is why we never got picked for sports teams at school.”
Her counterpart laughed, “That’s true!”
“To be fair, you’ve only got one arm working right at the moment,” Mandalee pointed out.
“Battle injuries?” Alt-Cat asked.
“Something like that, but you know I won’t let it stop me. Anyway, you’re sure it’s safe for me to have two of these?” she asked her counterpart.
“Positive. Just throw it back through before the Rift closes, and it’ll be fine. I have no use for its power, but you might need it and there’s no time to wait for yours to recharge.”
It was reassuring for Cat to learn that the power would return over time. She hadn’t realised that before.
“Now you have everything you need to fight your battle.”
“Maybe,” Cat allowed, “but before the shadow warriors turn up, how about you quickly coach us in some of the basics of Guardian Temporal magic? Just in case we need to buy Time later.”
Her counterpart readily agreed.