When Mandalee eventually turned up, she was in quite the state. Her clothes were blackened and torn, with patches of dried blood absorbed into the fabric. Her eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot. She was limping slightly, favouring her left leg and she was visibly exhausted, practically ready to drop.
“Mandalee!” Cat cried, momentarily too frozen to move. “What happened?”
The cleric snorted, “Like you care!”
“How can you say that?” Catriona gasped. “Of course I care, I’m your friend!”
“Yeah, I used to think that,” she muttered. Then when Cat moved to apply druid healing, she yelled, “Don’t you dare! You don’t get to erase this and say it all worked out in the end.”
“What—?”
“I needed you, Catriona!” Mandalee emphasised her full name, which she’d never used since the day they met. Her message was clear: ‘Your friends call you “Cat” but I’m not that anymore.’ “I needed your help, but you were too busy with ‘her’!” she spat, pointing at Dreya.
“Hey, don’t drag me into this,” Dreya objected. “It’s not like I’m keeping Cat prisoner if there’s somewhere else she needs to be.”
“You’re right,” Mandalee accepted. “I almost hoped you were keeping her prisoner.” To Catriona, she added, “I almost believed that was why you suddenly asked for my help.”
“What? No, it’s nothing like that, it’s just about my staff…”
“…Of course it is!” Mandalee rolled her eyes. “It’s always about your bloody staff!”
“Look, Mandalee, I only need you for an experiment—”
Mandalee laughed without humour.
“You are unbelievable! You only need me for an experiment! Otherwise, you have no use for me anymore? Well, that’s perfectly clear, thank you.”
“You know I didn’t mean it like that!” Cat protested. Then realising the leopard was missing, she gasped in horror, fearing the worst. “Wait, where’s Shyleen?”
“She’ll pull through. Not that I’d bring her to this gods’ forsaken place, anyway.”
“Pull through? You mean she’s hurt?”
“I paid for a group of druid healers to tend her.”
“You paid?” Cat was incredulous. “Why wouldn’t you just ask me?”
Mandalee fixed her with her bloodshot eyes, and spat, “I needed help I could rely on!”
“Mandalee, why are you acting like this?”
“Why?” Mandalee demanded, incredulously. “You know why…” she trailed off, seeing Cat’s blank look. “Dear gods,” she breathed, “you really don’t remember, do you?”
“Remember what?” Cat asked. “Mandalee, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Mandalee finally relented to being helped inside the Black Tower, where she could sit down.
*****
Mandalee explained how she’d been contracted to kill a demon that was terrorising a town some fifty miles from the Black Tower, not far from Compton, where she’d first met Catriona. Only about an hour away as the falcon flew. From the reports, it seemed like it was a Greater Demon from one of the lower planes, and almost certainly the most powerful she had ever faced. The other odd thing was that demons of that kind didn’t usually climb up from the depths on their own, which suggested it had been summoned. That, in turn, meant a wizard. With any luck, she could avoid the wizard and just take out the demon. After all, that was her job.
She had occasionally been contracted to kill a summoned mid-level demon before. Last time, the wizard himself had hired her when the demon he’d been studying broke free of his magical containment. Still, there was always the danger that a wizard could be angry at the interference, in which case, given the power of this demon, Mandalee was going to need help to defend herself. She hadn’t fought a wizard before, but she knew her friend had.
She had discussed all of this with Catriona when the contract came through a couple of days ago, and although her friend had had her nose in a book, as usual, she’d said, “Sure, Mandalee. Whatever you need.”
Cat frowned and searched her memory. “I think I vaguely remember saying that, but to be honest, I must not have been paying attention, because I don’t recall anything about you needing my help against a wizard. Just that you were going demon hunting miles away. Mandalee, I’m sorry, but why didn’t you remind me?”
“When?” Mandalee demanded. “I haven’t seen you since! You’ve been here all the time.”
“You could have contacted me sympathically,” Cat suggested.
“No, Cat, she couldn’t,” Dreya spoke up. “The shields around my Tower block incoming mental communications. Telepathy or anything similar. Some wizards favour mental attacks over physical ones. Had you but mentioned you had this sympathic link, I could have adjusted the shield, just as I did today.”
“So, what happened?” Cat asked Mandalee.
“I got lucky is what happened!”
It had taken pretty much everything Mandalee and Shyleen had to kill the demon, but the wizard was linked to it, so he knew instantly and came for her. Shyleen got between Mandalee and his first blast of magic, which nearly split the leopard in two. All the time, Mandalee was mentally screaming for Catriona who, as far as she was concerned, had promised to be there. Mandalee thought she was dead, for sure, when two figures whooshed overhead.
“It happened too fast for me to see properly, but it was most likely Daelen StormTiger fighting another of his great battles with Kullos or the dark clone – as if we don’t have enough problems without them!”
“Couldn’t agree more,” Dreya affirmed.
Mandalee blinked in surprise, then dismissed it as unimportant.
“Yes, well, in this case, I suppose it was just as well because it distracted the wizard – only for a moment, but it was long enough for me to run him through. Then, just as I’ve found a druid temple to take care of Shyleen, I get a sympathic message from you, Catriona, asking me to come and help you, after you singularly failed to be there for me!”
Cat opened her mouth, but she didn’t know what to say, except, “I’m so sorry, Mandalee.”
“And would ‘sorry’ have brought Shyleen back if that wizard’s magic had been just a bit stronger and killed her?”
Cat shook her head, tears welling up in her eyes. “Thank the gods it wasn’t,” she whispered.
“You should thank them,” Mandalee insisted, “because that’s the only reason I’m even talking to you rather than killing you.”
Cat offered to fly to Shyleen immediately and make sure they were doing the healing right, but Mandalee was scathing.
“No! As I said, you don’t get to undo this. Besides, I don’t trust you not to get distracted by something on the way. The only reason I came here was to make sure you were OK, and this one,” she pointed at Dreya, “hadn’t hurt you yet.”
“Hurt me?” Cat said. “What do you mean ‘yet’?”
“She’s Dreya the Dark. Give her time.”
Dreya raised her eyebrows but did not deign to comment.
“Come on, Mandalee, that’s not fa—”
“—Not fair?” Mandalee snapped. “You seriously don’t want to talk to me about fair right now!” Before Cat could say anything else, Mandalee rushed headlong to ask, “I don’t suppose you’ve found a way to do anything about this,” she indicated her body, “amid all your research?”
“About what?” Dreya asked, not understanding.
As delicately as possible, Catriona explained about Mandalee’s gender identity issues.
“Oh, is that all?” Dreya said.
“What do you mean, ‘Is that all’?” Mandalee demanded.
Dreya held up her hands. “My apologies, I didn’t intend to belittle how important this must be for you. To me, flesh is fleeting – the magic is all. I just meant, do people seriously give you grief over this?”
Mandalee nodded. “Oh yes, prejudice is still very much alive and well out there.”
Dreya shook her head, her usual calm demeanour slipping to display anger. “When is the world going to actually move forward?”
With a facial shrug, the cleric replied, “I’ve often wondered the same thing.” She paused, then, before admitting, “You know, I don’t dislike you as much as I expected.”
Dreya gave her a wry smile. “Well, that’s progress, at least, and in return, I must say, you’re the least disagreeable White cleric I’ve ever met.”
Mandalee acknowledged that with a nod. “But you still haven’t answered my question,” she reminded Catriona.
Taking a deep breath and cursing herself for letting her friend down twice in one day, she had to admit that she had so far been unable to find a way to affect a permanent change. Shapeshifting wasn’t the answer – not by itself. Cat couldn’t hold another shape for more than a few hours. She tried to waffle about temporal magic, to turn back time for Mandalee’s body to a point before puberty when it was easier for it to switch tracks and develop along the biological female line before returning it to Mandalee’s current age. But she had to admit she had no idea how to do that.
“In that case,” Mandalee said, “it seems to me, there’s only one more thing to do before I go: this stupid experiment of yours.”
“Go? Where? Why?” Cat began, then realised, “Oh, of course, to stay with Shyleen until she’s better. But then you’ll come back, right?” There was no immediate response. “Right?” she prompted, panic rising. She couldn’t lose Mandalee. Obviously, she’d made a terrible mistake, but surely, they could work it out. Couldn’t they?
Rather than answer, she just asked, “Are we doing this experiment or not?”
“Screw the experiment!” Cat insisted. “Just tell me you’re coming back as soon as Shyleen’s OK! Please tell me that!”
“No!” Mandalee yelled. “I’ve always been there for you, Catriona,” she still couldn’t bring herself to use her nickname. “No matter what ridiculous radical notion you got in your head, even when you said you were going to fight Dreya the Dark, I was there for you. Then the one time I asked for your help, when I needed you, you couldn’t even be bothered to listen! That’s not something I can get over just like that. I’m offering to help you this one last time; then I’m done.”
“Not forever, though?” Catriona’s tears flowed once more. “Please, Mandalee! I’m not asking you to forgive me, and I’ll give you all the time you need. Please just say you’ll come back when you’re ready.”
Mandalee shook her head. “I can’t promise that. I hope so. That’s all I can say.” Cat opened her mouth, but the cleric cut her off. “Don’t push me on this, Catriona,” she warned. “There’s nothing you can say right now that won’t make it worse. Now, this experiment?”
Cat was floundering, her mind spinning, emotions in turmoil. She was grateful when Dreya came to her rescue, all business-like and professional. The sorceress explained how the Crystal Mage Staff had reacted to both of them individually, and the question was how it would respond to both, simultaneously. Mandalee agreed to try it, so Dreya led her two guests upstairs to her training room. Catriona said nothing. She was too terrified to even look at her friend. Former friend? It broke her heart to imagine that might be true.
In addition to the three young women, Dreya’s death knight guards were also in the training room. Mandalee did not like them one bit and demanded to know what they were doing there. Dreya explained that they were a precaution, in case the staff’s reaction was even more violent than before.
“If we fly apart, they are swift enough to catch us and break our fall. Frankly, it’s either that or concussion.”
“Concussion has never sounded more attractive,” Mandalee grumbled.
“I could always tell them not to stop your head from going splat against my wall,” Dreya offered.
Mandalee sighed, deeply and relented. “OK, let them catch me. I’m not going to risk dying. Shyleen needs me, and I won’t let her down.”
Cat flinched at the barbs that flew her way but accepted the punishment without comment. Seeing that all was ready, she took her staff out of her pocket dimension and held it in a trembling hand. Then on the count of three, Mandalee and Dreya gripped the staff at the same time.
The violent reaction they had feared did not happen. There was a kind of pull, but it seemed somehow more balanced than before. Light flared from the crystal, painting a pattern on Dreya’s ceiling that looked not unlike the void storms in the Tempestrian sky. For a moment, the light began to form symbols, but they flickered and died before achieving full resolution. The staff seemed to indicate to Catriona that something was missing, but frankly, at the moment, she didn’t care.
*****
The accepted historical view of this event, gentle reader, is that it was a truly momentous occasion: the first time the Original Three came together – the Three who would one day become the first Guardians of Time and Magic, and save the world many times. That’s all very well for those of us who merely observe, detached, from a distance. For the three who were involved at the time, far from the beginning of something, it felt like an ending, and I’m sure the whole thing seemed utterly pointless.
Still, all relationships have their ups and downs. Even a friendship for the ages. Especially a friendship for the ages.