Shifting Stars, page 3
“Yes,” Michael gasped. “The pain…is too…too much, I…I consent.”
The instant the words left his mouth, all of his higher senses vanished, taking the pain with it. He couldn’t feel anything at all or hear, or taste, or smell. The stranger was true to their word, however, and left him with his sight intact. Michael almost wished he had asked them to take that away, too, given the terrible carnage and devastation all around. But since he felt at least partially responsible for it, Michael accepted that he had no right to be shielded from it, so he looked on.
The figure seemed to crouch down beside the still form of Catriona Redfletching and gently wake her with a touch. Cat stirred and opened her eyes. She looked puzzled for a moment as if she couldn’t quite work out what she was doing there. Then the memory rushed back, and the half-Faery girl shot to her feet, darting away as if trying to find something or someone. The ethereal figure seemed torn between trying to comfort or help Catriona, and impatiently checking what Michael assumed to be a timepiece on their wrist. As if some pressing need were threatening to drag them away against their wishes. After a short while, Cat sank to the ground once more, in the middle of the devastation that had been her home but moments before and buried her head in her hands. That was the moment the shrouded figure chose to approach her once more.
Michael was unable to hear the words that were said, but he guessed they must have been profound indeed, for they were enough for the distraught Catriona to look up and cease her tears. The girl seemed fascinated by the other’s presence as if they presented a puzzle intriguing enough to put her grief aside for the moment. Cat gazed at the other like she could not believe they were even real but couldn’t fathom why she felt that way.
After a short conversation, the shrouded figure convinced Catriona to stand and watch as the mage opened a pocket dimension and produced a small wooden staff, approximately three feet in height with a large blue crystal on top. Then the figure performed magic on the land, causing the grass to regrow, trees to mend and flowers to bloom. In short order, the village and its buildings were restored, not quite to their original design, but a fair approximation of it, as if they were reconstructing it not from recent memory, but from something more distant. The mage’s talents did not extend to bringing back the people who were lost that day, but by the time they were finished, at least those Quarthonian survivors that remained had somewhere to rebuild their lives. All through this, the crystal at the head of the staff sent a lightshow high into the sky, but frankly, Cat was far more interested in what was happening to the land.
Catriona looked on with wide-eyed astonishment, while all the other mortals seemed baffled by this apparent miracle. Some of them lifted their heads in praise to their gods, though Michael knew they had nothing to do with it. Others fell to their knees to worship Tempestria itself, perhaps in reverence to Blessed Alycia, Mother of Nature. Somehow, Michael thought this was nearer the mark, but none of them seemed to link what was happening with the mysterious figure floating beside Catriona. It was as if they could not perceive them at all. None except Michael and of course the young Catriona.
When the magical demonstration was done, the figure gave the staff to Catriona, who beheld it in wonder. The mage began to move away as if they were going to use the distraction of their gift to make good their escape, but then, as if pulled by unseen forces of compassion, they swooped back over to Catriona and embraced her. When they broke the hug, the mysterious figure took one more glance at their timepiece. It seemed that their time was finally up, for they stepped away from Catriona and began to fade. As they did so, Michael’s senses came flooding back, along with the agonising pain.
“I’m sorry, my friend,” came the whispered, melodic voice in his mind. “I think I might have forgotten to mention this part of our agreement. Sorry.” And then they were gone.
*****
My mother always referred to that glowing figure as her ‘Angel,’ but to this day, even with all our abilities, the Angel’s shroud remains impenetrable to all our scans. I only know what happened through a much later telepathic link with Michael, seeing his memory of events. Our best guess is that they were a future Guardian. Assuming we still have a future by the time I’m finished.
Investigation through Interactive Time travel is entirely out of the question. It’s a Temporal Black Spot where all are forbidden to venture, employing magical wards to prevent entry, and I know better than to try to breach them.
To interfere too often with the same events is potentially catastrophic. Time Intervention is not something the Guardians take lightly. Apart from myself, they are the only ones with the necessary knowledge and skill. Anyone else would be destroyed and scattered in the void like a dandelion in a hurricane.
Yes, I know I’m in the middle of an Illegal Time Intervention at this very moment (relatively speaking), but I assure you I would never endanger reality simply to satisfy my selfish curiosity about my mother’s Angel! Besides, this was the worst day of my mother’s life; Michael’s memory of watching an innocent young girl have her whole world ripped apart was distressing enough. I have no desire to witness it first-hand. I don’t know how she bore it. I’m certain I could not.
It took time to find out exactly what happened to Velena. In all the terror and confusion, keeping track of one individual had been difficult. But there were enough eyewitness accounts to confirm that she, like many others, was simply vaporised.
In later life, whenever Catriona spoke of these events, she always described her mother fighting with a ferocity that rivalled the void storms in the sky. She chose to remember Velena desperately giving her life to save the daughter she loved. While that may not match the account that I have written, gentle reader, I’m sure you can understand why my mother would prefer her own memory of events.
But I promised you that every word of this story would be true, so I shall not sugar coat these events…or those yet to come.
Chapter 3
It was a few years later, and Catriona Redfletching was talking to an old White wizard named Renjaf.
“Oh, come on!” she pleaded, “It’s not like I’m asking for the moon!”
Renjaf was something of a recluse. He lived in a tall tower, as was the fashion for wizards in those days, that sat within several acres of much-neglected land a few miles from the town of Compton, leaving only rarely. Why was Catriona there, gentle reader? The answer to that requires some explanation.
It naturally took some time for Cat to come to terms with everything that had happened, but eventually, life went on, as it always does. Pyrah helped enormously, with her frequent visits.
Who is Pyrah?
Well, not all higher planar beings appear human. They may manifest in all manner of guises. Pyrah, gentle reader, was one such creature, who seemed to be a small, green, highly venomous snake that had been Catriona’s friend and protector since she was a child. Cat first met her while playing in the forest around her father’s Quarthonian home. Pyrah had been injured, caught in the middle of another of Daelen’s battles. That time it was not against Kullos, but rather his dark clone, although that was a distinction without difference when dodging beam cannon blasts.
Cat said, “hello,” and was astonished when the snake said ‘hello’ back.
Well, not ‘said’ exactly, but communicated certainly – communicated sympathically. Let me see…how to explain sympathic communication… More than empathy, less than telepathy. Not that you can draw a straight line through the three. Sympathic communication involves the transmission of concepts. So rather than saying, “I am your friend,” Pyrah simply transmitted the concept, the idea of friendship. It didn’t allow for much in the way of subtlety in those days, but thanks to Catriona’s efforts to nurse her back to health, they managed to develop a powerful bond. Pyrah was sorry she had not been around to help when Cat lost her parents. Catriona was glad she had been absent. Otherwise, she might have lost her, too.
Still, there was no denying things had changed for Catriona. Before the day she lost her parents, the Day of the Monster, the Day of the Angel, Cat had been a promising student at magic school – a relatively new concept at the time, but one that would eventually supplant the old apprentice system. Three years later, her grades at college were mediocre at best. It just didn’t hold her interest as it had before. Now, she was more interested in her Angel.
I should point out that my mother didn’t really consider her miraculous visitor to have been an Angel in the literal sense. It was just that she couldn’t think of another label she could use that fitted any better. She dearly wished for something better, though, for one reason above all others: everybody said her Angel wasn’t real.
To everybody else who was there that day, the restoration of their village was an unexplained miracle, and they seemed happy for it to remain so. Not Catriona. Everybody attributed her imaginary guardian Angel to an expression of her grief. A way of dealing with the trauma and even survivor guilt. Her way of explaining the inexplicable, why she survived when others only a few feet away from her – her father included – did not.
‘Poor Catriona’ people would say. ‘It must be so hard for her to accept that there was no reason, just random chance.’
‘Give her time,’ the experts said. ‘In time, she will see and learn to accept it.’
But she never did.
She knew her Angel was real. How else did she acquire her ‘Crystal Mage Staff’ as she had named her gift, mostly for the convenience of having something to call it. She didn’t want to give it some grandiose name like ‘The Great Staff of Zarathon’ or ‘The Mystical Rod of Destiny’ or ‘The Almighty Staff of the Gods.’ No. It was a simple wooden staff, something that mages liked to use to channel magic and it had a large blue crystal on the top. Hence ‘Crystal Mage Staff.’ Simple. Unassuming. Unpretentious. Although, it did radiate a kind of higher planar energy that Cat did not understand, buried beneath layers upon layers of security and protection.
Her Angel had warned her not to tamper with that energy, “Except,” they said, “in the event of some dire emergency of worldwide, cataclysmic proportions. And even then, think twice.”
Catriona kept that part to herself. No sense in drawing attention to it if it were that important. There were always those who were covetous of power and might seek to take the staff from her. She could never allow that. She herself was hardly likely to be involved in any ‘dire emergency of worldwide, cataclysmic proportions.’ Besides, she wasn’t interested in power as such. She was much more interested in acquiring knowledge. Specifically, knowledge relating to the Crystal Mage Staff, because that was her only link to her Angel.
On a more practical level, her Angel had inspired her to look at druid magic in a new way. Of the three principal flavours of magic, druid abilities were something of a poor cousin next to wizardry and clerical magic.
Not knowing how magic works on your world, gentle reader, or indeed whether any such equivalent exists where you are, I should break off for a moment to explain how it works on Tempestria. To put that in its proper context, however, I first need to discuss dimensional cosmology.
*****
Although I’ve been alive for a thousand years or so, I look like a human girl of about twenty, and perhaps it’s vain of me, but I like to try and stay in touch with people who really are that young. One of the best ways to do that, I have found, is to go back to college and be a student again for a while. After all, a lot has changed in the last millennium, so there’s always more to learn.
So, to help me explain things to you now, I’m going to borrow from one of my many college dissertations:
THE GREAT COSMIC SANDWICH
Barring some grand, cosmic catastrophe, all mortal worlds exist in the middle of The Great Cosmic Sandwich.
The layer above is the cheese, aka the realm of the gods. There are a wide variety of gods to choose from, different gods suit different people according to their tastes, and quite frankly, some of them stink. The layer immediately below is the first of the demonic planes – I like to think of them as the tomato layer with all that red simulating blood. No-one knows precisely how many layers there are below that, although I’m convinced one of them must be pickles. Apologies to anyone who likes them – it’s all a matter of taste of course, but to me, they are vile and disgusting things and surely sent from hell itself. Besides, some people like to ‘pickle’ specimens in jars for all manner of strange experiments. This fits symbolically with what those Greater Demons tend to do with the unfortunate mortals they snatch when they make their way up through the planes of reality to the mortal realm.
Above the gods, there are other creatures, mostly beyond mortal comprehension. To me, these are the sauces: adding to the overall flavour of the cosmos without contributing anything of nutritional value and – if your sandwich shops are anything like ours, gentle reader – not always what you expected to get when you ordered. Similarly, with rare exceptions, these higher planar beings contribute little of substance to the cosmos, from a mortal’s point of view, but neither do they do any harm. Then you have the shadow realm where my father and his people come from – more on them later. For now, suffice to say they are the lettuce in the sandwich. They’re good for us, and they know it. In fact, they’re so good for us, they’re going to help us whether we like it or not. The trouble is, since they are so good for us, they’re convinced they’re better than mortals. Frankly, I’m rather more interested in the meaty bit in the middle – that’s mortals along with the Guardians and, if I may be so bold, myself – although if I’m honest, a good, well-balanced sandwich is probably best for all of us.
Of course, all the fillings of the Great Cosmic Sandwich need something to contain them. At the bottom, the deepest part of the demonic planes is home to the Keeper of the Underworld, often seen as some kind of Source of Evil, topped by a spread of fallen Angels. But I can’t help thinking that I, too, would probably be a bit grumpy, if I were always being squished by the weight of the universe pressing down on me like I was a flattened slice of bread. At the other end, at the pinnacle of the sandwich, the crowning glory, as it were, the Creator stands on the shoulders of their own spread of Angels, who think they’re the best thing next to sliced bread. As for the Creator themselves, I see them as a large bun: risen too high, over-inflated with their own self-importance and probably slightly burnt on top.
I should probably point out, gentle reader, that my college dissertation was, in point of fact, marked down for my ‘flippant treatment of the subject matter.’ But this is my story, my world that’s in danger and as my mother’s Angel put it, this is indeed a ‘dire emergency of worldwide cataclysmic proportions,’ so I’ll be as flippant as I like.
Oh, and in case you think my mother’s staff is somehow the key to my saving the world, gentle reader, you’re absolutely right. It doesn’t have any power anymore, the last of it faded centuries ago, but it is the perfect device for wedging my bedroom door shut so that the Red and Black Guardians can’t get out. Physics of triangles plus an adaptive anti-magic field and two of the world’s most powerful individuals have to take it in turns to take a nap on my bed. Well, I suppose they could squeeze up and share, but I don’t think they’re that close! Is that flippant enough for you?
Actually, all flippancy aside, in complete and utter seriousness, there is a compulsory side order to our Sandwich. A force, an entity infinitely more dangerous than the Keeper of the Underworld. IT is formless, IT is genderless. IT is the enemy of life and structure and Creation itself. IT is the antithesis of order but calling IT chaos is to try to put IT in a box that is far too small to contain ITs nature. IT is nameless; the only term we have for this entity is ‘IT.’ IT cannot be killed or destroyed, for death and destruction are ITs food and drink.
The Guardians and I stand against IT and must be constantly vigilant against IT, especially when we Intervene in Time. If we get things wrong, we could unravel Time and the whole of Creation. That’s why the current Black and Red Guardians are so against what Mandalee and I are doing: they’re afraid and justifiably so. I’m not going to sit here and say we have no choice, because we do. Our choice is to act, fully aware of the risk. That’s why I’m writing this.
I’m sure you’re wondering what danger we could possibly be facing that we would risk everything to do this, but I can’t tell you yet. Sure, I could give you a name – unlike IT, this threat does have one – but I might as well call him ‘Bob’ for all that it would mean to you. What you need is context, and that takes time.
Fortunately, gentle reader, I’m something of an expert in that field.
Chapter 4
Now, where was I before I got carried away by the Great Cosmic Sandwich? Ah yes, magic.
Clerical magic came first, historically speaking. The gods feed on the worship of mortals and to help encourage this, it was in their interests to use some of their powers to help mortals achieve things down here. It made mortals more inclined to worship them if they felt they were getting something from it. Clerics grew powerful in this way, but there was a drawback: gods are often fickle and determining what might please them from one moment to the next was challenging, to say the least. That made their magic unreliable at times.
Some people got fed up with this dance with the gods and postulated that mortals could achieve the same results by themselves with patience and study. They believed that the clerics’ real source of power was not the gods themselves, but a power that the gods refined from the inter-planar repulsion forces. Simply put, that which allowed the planes of reality to remain separate and distinct. Over time, wizards learned to take this power for themselves, and their spells grew to match clerical prayers in power and intensity.
