Ignoring them, Cat briefly outlined her plan to her friends and to their counterparts on the other side of the Rift. This was going to rely on more co-operation. Cat hated to ask more of them, but Alt-Cat was dismissive.
“Our world is already lost. Trust me, you can’t make things worse over here. Whatever we have left is yours.”
The Guardians prepared to cast the magic and release the two combatants, but Mandalee wondered, “Can we really use this magic within the rules of the Council? Is it legal? Is it right…for any of us?”
“Frankly, Mandalee, I don’t care,” Cat insisted. “The rules were never designed with this in mind.”
“Besides,” Dreya put in, “there won’t be a Council or anything else if we don’t.”
The Guardians stopped trying to apply their Time magic to the whole area, and just focussed in on the Heaven’s Surrender and Wish barrier powers. They couldn’t halt the detonation and still do what they needed to do, but it was slowed to an almost imperceptible crawl.
“You’re too late!” Kullos laughed. “Slow it down all you want; it will just prolong your suffering! Your power won’t be enough to stop my weapon, Daelen!”
As a trio, the Guardians chorused, “No, but ours will be!”
Dreya and Mandalee instantly went into battle, while Cat stepped up next to Daelen. “I told you I wouldn’t let you do this alone.”
“How did you break the power seals?” Daelen demanded.
“How many times, Daelen? Power isn’t everything. There’s always a way around it.”
With the rush of exhilaration at what they were doing, she momentarily forgot her injuries, until a careless movement jarred her, painfully, making her wince.
“You’re hurt,” Daelen observed.
“Small accident, ruffled feathers, looks worse than it is,” she lied.
Daelen, on the other hand, had almost drained himself fighting Kullos, yet he suddenly felt reinvigorated.
Catriona caught his gaze, and with a wink and a smirk, answered his unspoken question. “OK, maybe I sort of ‘misplaced’ a bit of Heaven’s Surrender energy and used it, as you would say, to recharge your batteries.”
“Is that in the rules?” the shadow warrior wondered.
Cat shrugged, innocently. “How should I know? I’m new at this Guardian thing, remember! Now, could you please help the others keep Kullos occupied? I’m busy saving the world.”
Daelen moved away, launching wave after wave of attacks, visibly driving Kullos back. Even though his enemy was able to deflect many of his attacks, enough to avoid severe damage, the sheer ferocity and relentlessness began to wear Kullos down, especially with help from the other two. In many ways, it was just like the old days, except with two Guardians taking the place of Michael. Working together like this, Daelen realised something that had never occurred to him before: they were going to win this fight.
Dreya’s magical flames seared into her enemy’s side where he was already hurt and bleeding from Daelen’s onslaught. She swiftly backed that up with multiple lightning bolts and poisoned darts coated with the best magical copy of Pyrah’s venom that Catriona could create. Her magic didn’t match Daelen’s power, but she was highly skilled in anticipating and countering Kullos’ deflections, even spinning her smart fireballs, so they hit in just the right spot. Her dark beam cannon really caught Kullos by surprise.
Mandalee caused a Flame Hammer to appear in her hand, still instinctively going for physical attacks, even when using magic. The opposing attacks from Dark wizard magic and the power of a cleric of Light seemed to cause a surprising amount of pain to Kullos, so she unsheathed her Pureblade with her left hand. It had been blessed and sanctified by clerics of Light and gifted to her more than two years ago when she saved some clerics from a powerful demon attack. It recognised her alignment to the Light and magically adjusted its weight and balance to suit the assassin. Kullos still continued to largely ignore her, though, considering her the lesser threat. Mandalee found that rather insulting.
“Time was when people took the threat of the White Assassin seriously!” she grumbled.
“I know how you feel,” Dreya agreed. “He’s pretty much ignoring me, too. It’s highly offensive.”
“Maybe we could make him change his mind,” Mandalee suggested, then she used their sympathic link to convey her plan to the Dark sorceress, verbally adding, “Daelen told Cat that shadow warriors are like light in a box. Aren’t you curious to see what that looks like?”
Dreya gave her a dark smile, and agreed, “Let’s slice one open and find out.”
The assassin dispelled her Flame Hammer, shifted her Pureblade to her right hand and flicked her dragonclaw dagger into her left. She stuck both weapons in Kullos’ most serious wound and parted the flesh like she was carving a roasted duck. The oversize Kullos continued to ignore them. They were insects, parasites, nothing more. Dreya stepped up and focused a beam cannon blast deeper and deeper until it struck something akin to a nerve, sending Kullos into a kind of spasm. That proved highly dangerous as his power shot off in all directions at random. Mandalee ended up knocking Dreya bodily to the ground to get them both out of danger. She cursed at leaving one of her best weapons still embedded in his flesh, but she supposed she would just have to go and retrieve it later. Right at that moment, though, it was too dangerous to even attempt to get up. Still, they had done what they set out to do: Kullos had dropped his control device.
Daelen stepped up his power levels still further to cover them, drawing on reserves even he never knew he possessed.
Meanwhile, Cat was working new magic with the help of the Chronicles and her otherworld counterpart, acting with the full agreement of Mandalee and Dreya who loved her and trusted her enough to let her do whatever she thought was right. They didn’t need to know all the details.
*****
It was all thanks to her Angel.
All those years ago, she had been given a clue that she only now understood. Her Angel had warned her not to tamper with that energy, ‘Except in the event of some dire emergency of worldwide, cataclysmic proportions.’
Well, this undoubtedly qualified, but the problem was she’d had to draw power from the staff already. It had been necessary to create the Guardians’ new base of operations from her Meadow, and there wasn’t enough left to do what she needed to do now.
But what about the last part of her Angel’s message: ‘Even then, think twice’? After so many years, Cat finally realised she had been punctuating it wrong in her head.
What her Angel had really said was, “Even then, think: Twice.”
Twice. Catriona could use the staff twice because there were two of them: hers and the one her counterpart had given her. Having the latter meant she had enough power on her side, but what about the other side? Cat could send her Crystal Mage Staff through the Rift in exchange, but where were they going to get power from to recharge it quickly? They were consuming the last of their Heaven’s Surrender blast just to keep the Rift open, and their Tempestria was being unmade. But there was one other source of power.
When their counterparts became Guardians, they had created their own base of operations, their own Catriona’s Meadow, using power from Alt-Cat’s staff. Equally, then, they could do the reverse: if they collapsed part of it, that would recharge the staff enough for what they needed. Their Catriona’s Meadow had been designed to be the Guardians’ home. As such, it was a recreation of Daelen’s entire grounds on StormClaw, about twenty-five square miles. Far larger than the one Cat had grown in Daelen’s garden on Earth.
But this action meant that the last refuge of the people who were selflessly saving her world, would jettison all that extra space. According to Catriona’s rough calculations, it would leave an area less than two hundred yards in any direction from the oak tree in the centre. That would be their whole world forever. Their prison.
They couldn’t travel to another world because the world on which they were born would never have existed. Logically, if Tempestria never existed, the Guardians could not possibly exist, either. Only within their Timeless bubble of reality, their Catriona’s Meadow, could that contradiction be nullified.
The worst thing was, Cat knew it was her fault. If only she’d been quicker, or if only she’d thought to take Time incrementally backwards instead of forwards to get through Daelen’s power seals, then she could have stopped Kullos before he used Heaven’s Surrender. But even after all the clues, all the Time Interventions, everything her counterpart had done to help things along, Cat had still managed to be a fraction too late. She wouldn’t have blamed the other world’s Guardians for cutting their losses, but somehow, they were still determined to help.
“We’re as one in this,” Alt-Cat had assured her. “Don’t blame yourself. You did everything you could, and really the cost isn’t that high: a larger prison would still have been a prison. Tolerable for a while longer, perhaps, but not forever. We would always have chosen death after a while, and maybe you’ve brought that time closer than it would have been, but with our world unmade and gone forever, maybe that’s a mercy. As one Faery to another, with the backing of my only two friends in existence, I give to you, freely, that which is precious. Execute the plan.”
Cat wished her counterpart hadn’t phrased it quite that way. She couldn’t help thinking that was exactly what she was doing: executing them. Executing three innocent people. Heroes.
Still, there was nothing else for it. She had their consent and no other choice.
She threw her staff through the Rift so the other Guardians could charge it up. Everything had to be ready before they could finally act. After a few moments, it was done. She just needed Mandalee and Dreya to finish their job.
Using her super-speed, when Kullos was back under control of himself and still focussing on Daelen, the assassin quickly pulled her Pureblade from Kullos’ side and returned to Dreya.
The sorceress called out to her girlfriend, “Can I borrow one of the flowers I gave you, please? I think this calls for fresh blood magic!”
The sorceress had left her dagger where she threw it in Kullos’ fortress. There hadn’t been time to waste trying to find it. Besides, the roses were infused with clerical and druid magic, too, which could make all the difference.
Cat reached into her pocket dimension and pulled a red rose out of the vase, tossing it to Dreya who caught it with a simple grace that Cat quietly envied.
Mandalee winced as Dreya embedded a thorn in her left index finger, although the sorceress herself gave no outward sign of discomfort.
Returning the rose, the Black Guardian channelled her magic through her blood and built up her power, adding as much higher planar energy into the mix as she could. Then she fired it at the control device, which Mandalee held firmly in her right hand. Dreya’s control and precision, as well as Mandalee’s weapon mastery and trust in her best friend’s lover, were tested to the limit. Dreya had to take great care not to blow Mandalee’s hand off, and Mandalee had to keep her right hand absolutely still even as she channelled all of her cleric powers from the Light end of the magical spectrum, from Shyleen, into her Pureblade in her left hand, swinging it around to strike the control device. Neither of them could afford to even flinch as both the control device and Pureblade shattered. Shards and fragments of metal flying in all directions.
Both women were left utterly exhausted.
“No!” Kullos roared.
Realising what they’d done, he tried to scramble for the fragments, but Cat smashed a bottle of water and grew an ice wall in his path. There was no escape for him now – without the control device, he couldn’t Ascend, and if he opened a portal, he knew the Guardians would no longer hold back Time, and the Heaven’s Surrender blast would catch up with him before he got anywhere. If he tried to kill the mortals, Time would definitely return to normal, and again the blast would consume him in an instant.
To Daelen, he ranted, “If I can’t get away, then neither can you!”
Daelen never had any such intention, but he knew it was useless to tell Kullos that.
In an act of spite, Kullos used his powers to open half a dozen portals and move the fragments with his mind so they each flew through one of them before they closed.
Dreya immediately began analysing the residual magic, trying to determine where and when the fragments went. She could quickly tell some of the portals had temporal signatures and others went to worlds beyond Tempestria. It wasn’t going to be easy to get accurate readings this close to the Rift, with so much Temporal magic flying around, but she would do her best. They would have to be found. The power in each fragment would be incredible and, worse, unstable, given the forces involved. There was no telling what might happen if people got their hands on even one.
“Cat! Notebook!” Dreya called over.
The sorceress had an excellent memory, but as always, she knew her limits. Cat threw it over to her, and Dreya began scribbling notes and rough calculations. She ended up with six sets of co-ordinates that should create sympathic impressions of the portals’ destinations, but they would have to deal with that later. Right now, they were busy.
Now that Kullos was trapped, Cat and her counterpart could work together.
“Goodbye!” Cat called through the Rift.
There wasn’t time for more – the energy was almost used up. The Rift could close any minute. Her counterpart had assured her that her two friends had a portal to their version of Catriona’s Meadow – what was left of it – open and ready. The only place they could go where IT could not follow. As soon as Alt-Cat had played her part, she would have to use that portal to escape the blast that was coming her way.
On this side of the Rift, as the others watched the space around them, the ruins of Daelen’s base within the containment field seemed to disappear and then reappear an instant later. It was as if they had all blinked at the same time. Everything was still as it was, except for two crucial details: the blast of Heaven’s Surrender and Daelen’s Wish barrier were gone.
Kullos noticed immediately. “That’s impossible!”
“Not for us,” Cat countered, breathing hard. “We’ve just done a little swap with some friends.”
*****
Thanks to the containment field, they had been able to move the entire affected space through the Rift and swap it for the equivalent area on the other side, without touching anything beyond its boundaries. It was, in essence, the same magic they’d used to move Catriona’s Meadow into its own private layer in the Cosmic Sandwich. It was just a question of scale. But if the Power of Three is exponentially more powerful than the Power of Two, gentle reader, you can imagine what the Power of Six was like.
On the original Tempestria, Heaven’s Surrender had been detonated outside the containment field. Inside, thanks to the Guardians’ efforts, it was unaffected. On our Tempestria, it was the other way around. Since it was a simple like-for-like swap, there was no Creation magic involved, just as swapping staves was no problem. No rules were violated. At least, not cosmic ones.
*****
Catriona just hoped the other Guardians had made it to safety in time. She supposed she would never know.
“See, Daelen? I told you!” Cat remarked, cheekily, trying to distract herself from her own thoughts. “I said you didn’t need to sacrifice yourself!” Sympathically, she sent, ‘Kullos. Rift. Now.’ Hoping he would understand she meant him to knock Kullos into the Rift itself. It would send him to the other side, where the Guardians’ Time magic was still keeping the new Heaven’s Surrender power at bay. Once he was on the other side, she would cancel the Time magic entirely. The blast would destroy Kullos, and the Wish barrier would protect the Rift just in case it didn’t quite close quickly enough.
“I guess you were right all along. Power really isn’t everything.” Daelen admitted as he grappled with his nemesis, pushing him ever closer to the Rift.
“You’re finished, Kullos,” he told him, “We’ve had our Final Battle, and you’ve lost! Give it up!”
But Kullos seemed to make up his mind about something and with a voice that was not his own, he replied, “Arrogant shadow warrior! This was never about you, or this world – those were only ever bonus prizes.” Cat recognised the voice from when she unlocked the Chronicles, as the voice of IT. “The real target is defenceless before IT. Through her, IT might be banished forever, but now that will never happen. The Abomination shall never come to be, and IT will finally extinguish all of Creation!”
Pulling free from Daelen for an instant, Kullos used the last of his power to fire one final cannon blast at Catriona.
Time seemed to slow down for her, but it was only perception, not magic. She didn’t have the necessary skill to weave Guardian magic in two worlds at once. Still, she had dealt with beam cannon blasts before. This was no different. After all, even before she became a Guardian, her magic already had a temporal element. All she needed was her sand.
With horror, though, just when she had committed herself, she realised she had none. The pouch in which she carried it must have ripped open when she crash-landed in Kullos’ throne room. That meant no Nature’s Mirror and no defence. If only she hadn’t recklessly, futilely dived at Daelen’s portal, perhaps she could have shapeshifted her way out of it, but her injuries made that impossible. There hadn’t been time to heal, and due to the increased swelling and inflammation, she could barely move at all, now. Her friends couldn’t help her, there was simply no time…no time to do anything…except die.
But Daelen had other ideas. Thinking nothing for himself, he opened himself up. This body wasn’t really him. He wasn’t human, not even remotely. He was light in a box and light could travel very fast. Ripping open his mortal body, he also had access to extra dimensions where Time moved differently. He gave every last bit of himself over to this one action – envelop and absorb the cannon blast, allowing it to do irreparable internal damage. Ignoring the searing agony, he took every last drop of power and used it to thrust himself forward, catapulting Kullos through the Rift. Cat cancelled all her Time magic and closed the Rift as fast as she could.
Before it closed completely, there seemed to be a further surge of energy that she couldn’t identify. Cat worried it might be a small portion of the Heaven’s Surrender blast, but a quick scan indicated no trace of IT. Their world was safe, even if Daelen was not. He somehow managed to pour his essence back into his mortal body, but the damage was done. Neither Cat nor Mandalee knew the first thing about healing a shadow warrior in that condition. There was nothing they could do.