Title: 3xCO (phonetically: three ex see oh; written as Three X-C-O; or, three times C-O)
Crossover: Tin Man/Robin Hood/Night at the Museum 1 & 2
Non-canon Pairings: Glitch/Cain (non-canon, really?), DG/Chessa, Az/Zero, eventual Jedediah/Octavius
Follows: Lilies Verse, six months after The Breaking Spell... Sort of an alternative universe of Lilies Universe.
Rating: Teen. Apparently Jed swears. Who knew? Also some manhandling.
Note on the Text: All pre-chapter quotes attributed to single characters are from their respective shows/movies. The Robin Hood I use is mainly the first season of BBC's Robin Hood (2006) but your favorite Robin will do.
Summary: An old and missing artefact needs to be found before some cranky diplomats decide to declare war on Queen Faunatasia and her fine land of the O.Z. To help track the artefact down, DG enlists the help of an exiled relative, who knows more about the Outer Zone and the Other Side than he's ever admitted. Friends old and new hop a long for the ride, and then shit happens...

3xCO

But the three zones mingle and amalgamate along the edges, like the colors in the solar spectrum.
— Victor Hugo, Notre-Dame de Paris

Volume One: CHANGE
I.
A Lily Borrowed
"My dear chap, better it is for a man that he marry a sympathetic gargoyle
than a Venus with a streak of hardness in her."
– PG Wodehouse, Uneasy Money

Raindrops permeated all blocks solid, heavy, turning each object to something as fragile and moveable as a tear. Water collapsed to water in the tiny pond, outlined in wild stones shaped by breaths of passing gods. Water, he mused, everywhere. In the pond, in the back garden. Beyond that and beyond that, to the highest Andlermiel peak, to the lacy trees in the eastward plain of Nayierri Monna.

Annix darted his grey-hued eyes quickly, attentively, trying to catch a raindrop as it crashed into its kin. He saw it pile up. He saw it rise eagerly into puddles. He'd been awake since dawn. He'd helped Mistress tend to the horse, packed her haversack, watched her leave. But Liegess was upstairs, the tower bedroom, still asleep.

Aqua lilies, the Siacullat of ancient tongue, caught all the light when trees held none. Their cup-shaped petals faced the falling clouds, caught the substance, drank it down. Liegess liked the aqua lilies best. He ventured into the harmless fray, plucked one, and dropped it to the breakfast tray. It mattered little how many he took, one each morning, one every hour. Every day, since Liegess planted them, they grew fiendishly fast, ready to sprout and be adored and ogled and loved. In a few hours, when the rain stopped, when Annix next passed the pond, the lily would return, as though he hadn't held it at all.

He called her Liegess. In his vernacular, it meant princess. But he was apt to call the rain fire and the sky lead, as likely as he was to call a princess anything but Liegess.

Lee. Jess. Such syllables ran together perfectly, sonorously. Oh, mellifluously. He hobbled up the staircase, for his kind always hobbled no matter the carefulness of storybook descriptions. But he hobbled on legs that no tree stump envied, with a tray that never hobbled itself but remained steady. He had carried trays for six months, since the last of the bones from the old cottage had gone and the Tower was built on a once-haunted foundation. He knew bones and trays and secrets of the staircase. He knew where the mice lived and where they watched him. He knew how to use his fundament to push in the bedroom door.

He knew that a lily borrowed in the morning would always return to her watery bed to sleep at night, and be there the next day.

In an score of light, Annix beheld the new lily. A shade of blue plagued its pearly gown. Colour unnaturally given. A message without text, without lyrics. A song buried in a dead wind. A poem written with an inkless pen. A hint of colour, and a princess in a tower who'd know what to do.

Some witches read cards, others tea leaves. Some witches read thoughts and palms. Some read the speckles in eyes. Some read nothing at all but merely felt secrets. But his witch, the Liegess—Lee Jess—Liegess—she read petals, read mornings, read omens in morning mist and suns-kissed clouds. She read things that normal humans were not allowed to see. Invisible things, books, poems, verses. She heard songs sung by dead kinsmen and myths. She painted places unseen for generations, buried by time and lost to memory.

She was his first mistress. He was her gift. Her pet. Her manservant. The one who looked out for her. Who cleaned. Cared. Brought trays of breakfast for her when Second Mistress was away.

Carefully blowing on the lily, to wake it, as it'd drooped and drowsed in its tiny vase, Annix tiptoed into the silent room. Such a lovely room, he thought of it again. How bare it'd been! Now veils of pink covered the windows, the bed posts. Artwork done by Liegess hung from stone. A tapestry in the corner, brought from Liegess' home, was unsettled in the shift of air.

Annix set the tiny glass vase to its humble spot, its point, he thought, of origin. Where lilies came to be born again. He blew on it a second time. The tapestry shifted again. Talking to him, saying things that hadn't ears for. An old spell book propped up the tray. He'd rattled enough. He'd woken the tapestry, the lily, the veils at windows and bedposts. Now it was time for Liegess to open her eyes. Annix waited, fingers hovering anxiously at his lips. She would remember, he hoped, and he wouldn't have to tell her. She wouldn't go, he hoped, and he wouldn't have to coax her.

He was only a gargoyle. And they were not good for much but talking alliteratively, for carrying trays, for waking lilies, for carrying rain away.

The tapestry lifted its fringed skirt. The lily drifted upward. The veils billowed slightly, always asking "What if…? What if…?" And he knew nothing of What If.

DG opened her eyes, having sensed the change, the shift as subtle as a blue petal on a lily.