Claudine sat at the conference table with a slight scowl on her face. She was finding it simply impossible to hate Ereve.

It was beautiful. Too beautiful. Flowers bloomed in spring and summer, leaves turned an incredible shade of ruby red in the fall, and in the winter the floating island was blanketed with crisp, pure snow completely unlike the icy tundra of El Nath. It was impossible to hate the natural wonder those knights called their home.

She wanted to consider it pretentious, as if it were above the beauty of Edelstein, but she knew that the flower gardens in her home city were just as beautiful. She mentally rolled her eyes at the thought of Elex's kindergarten class tending to the flowers; the very idea could have caused her to lapse into a diabetic coma.

The Alliance had worked out a lot of kinks in the relationship between the Knights and the Resistance. Black Heaven had virtually eliminated those kinks. By the time Damien had started his invasion, the two sides had agreed to work together as if it were simply the only natural thing to do. So why did Claudine really, really, really want to hate Ereve?

That would be because of the paper she found taped to her strategy notes in the Resistance headquarters this morning, featuring a crudely-drawn image of her and Neinheart, Cygnus's chief strategist, kissing. The image was surrounded by numerous hearts- several of which had been colored in with crayons- and featured the tagline "Claudy and Niney sittin' in a tree!", signed (in Belle's handwriting) "Brighton".

Tomorrow, Claudine decided, she was going to coat the hunter's jaguar saddle in Nependeath honey.

The chattering of the various heroes at the table indicated that everyone was present. And so, Neinheart politely rapped his knuckle on the table.

"Order, order!" He intoned. The chatter died down. Neinheart liked it when the chatter died down. The blue-haired man breathed in and out to calm himself. "Let's get down to business…"

"Hold up, Niney." The Empress's chief Thunder Breaker, Hawkeye, proceeded to interrupt the ceremony. "I gotta stop you right there for a sec. If this is another meeting about what to do about the World Tree, can we just skip everything and break for lunch?"

There was a murmur of approval. Ever since the legendary heroes had reported the fate of the World Tree following Damien's attempted invasion, most of the Alliance meetings consisted of talking about what they were going to do in the wake of such events.

"I have to agree." Luminous, the mage of light and darkness sighed. "As problematic as the situation is, we can't particularly do much about it."

"Problematic?" The Demon, former commander of the Black Mage, scoffed. "One of the most powerful gods in our world is gone. The only true rival of the Black Mage himself."

"Hey, what are we, chopped liver?" Alpha, the son of Rhinne, huffed. His sister, Beta, simply glanced back and forth between her brother and the rest of the table with an emotionless expression on her face.

"No," the Demon sighed, "you're just two halves of a whole."

"Oi! Say that again you purple-!"

"Enough!" Neinheart commanded, rather loudly. He sighed and proceeded to clean his monocle with a cloth.

"Alpha…Beta…while I respect your power, you two have only been Transcendents for so long. Your skills are nowhere near the level of the Black Mage. And to add to the issue, the Demon is correct; you are split from one being." Alpha opened his mouth to protest, but Neinheart continued. "Meaning this: if you want to reach the level of the Black Mage, both of you will need training. Even if you two recombined into one being- which I have serious qualms about even suggesting since that would amount to killing both of you- your powers combined are nowhere near that of your mother, let alone the Black Mage."

Alpha opened his mouth to speak again, but Beta put her hand on his shoulder.

"Alpha…he's right you know. We must get stronger. The both of us."

The male half of the Transcendent of Time shut his mouth, and promptly slumped in his chair, feeling defeated.

"That having been said…" The strategist continued. "The issue with the World Tree is not, in fact, why I called this meeting."

There was a murmur of confusion, which died after Neinheart gave a small look to the crowd.

"Well…spit it out then." Claudine crossed her arms. Admittedly, she was also curious about this turn of events, but she wouldn't dare let that curiosity show.

"Are you aware of the Three Doors?" Neinheart questioned the crowd cryptically.

"Three doors…?" Kyrin, the pirate captain, mused to herself. "Y'mean those three big ones what be in the Temple 'a Time?"

"Mother's temple?" Beta questioned.

"I have heard the legends." Lady Syl, leader of the Dual Blades supplied. "The three doors open the ways to the future, the present, and the past."

"The doors are real, and in fact very commonly seen by visitors, and they do as the legends say." Said Athena Pierce, the bowman instructor. "Typically they remain closed. However, the Door to the Past was broken into some time ago, and the Door to the Future was opened to…well…"

The crowd hung in solemn silence for a while. The future that was seen by Maple World…even if it was a dream, it just seemed so real.

"And the Door to the Present?" Inquired Kinesis, who, being from the Other World, had not been present to experience the dream the others had.

"That…" Athena paused. "Yuuki should be able to answer that, I think."

The mentioned warrior frowned. "The Door to the Present doesn't open for most people. I'm still not sure why it opened for me. Anyway, it leads to an area of the temple shrouded in darkness…" The warrior closed his eyes, remembering. "And at the end of the space was the room where the Black Mage is…er, was sealed. I haven't been able to enter since he broke free."

Luminous nodded. "When we went to fight him, that was the place he had chosen to command his forces from. I do not know why he chose it." Luminous glanced at the Demon, who merely shook his head as a sign of ignorance on the subject. The light mage continued, "However when I went to visit recently, the door was closed for me as well."

"It doesn't budge even when both of us tried to open it." Alpha snorted. "We asked mom, but she said it didn't always open for her either."

"The Temple is an ancient place, perhaps more ancient than Rhinne herself." Athena said. "It seems only logical there's some power behind it that doesn't make sense to us."

"Then let's quit trying to make sense of it! Quit tryna explain the unexplainable." Hawkeye harrumphed. "Niney, what's wrong with the big door? Missing the big doorbell?"

"It's open." The strategist said bluntly.

The table fell silent.

"I will physically slap anyone who shouts 'WHAT!' in my ear." Alpha said calmly.

"B-but…but how?!" The Demon exclaimed, quietly so the half-Transcendent wouldn't assault him.

"Wait, calm down for a second." Lady Syl stood up to help her voice carry. "Doesn't the door simply lead to where the Black Mage was sealed? That doesn't sound like a reason to call all of us here…"

"Unless the place where the Black Mage was sealed featured a swirling portal with blue sand spewing out of it, I don't think the door has opened to the same place we know of." Neinheart continued.

"The Temple, as Athena said, does have a strange power." Grendel the Really Old chimed in. "The doors do not simply lead to a single place, they lead to their corresponding times. That is why if you go back far enough through the Door to the Past you will reach the Twilight of Gods, even though no such area is visible from the outside of the Temple. The Door to the Future is an even better example. It does not seem much of a stretch to say the third door follows similar rules- or lack thereof."

"But…then…where does it lead?" Questioned Claudine.

"That…" Said Neinheart. "Is what I intend to find out."