Chapter 12
Megan was walking along dark stairs in a distance of few steps from her mother. The queen lighted her path with a magic ball of green light, while the remaining space inside the tower was submerged in a complete darkness. In a minute, the girl was going to learn what new surprise her real mother prepared for her.
"Perhaps I should call dad or my friends?" She asked.
"No. They are enjoying the night amongst my subjects. You will join them soon. I want you to stay only with me for a few more minutes, because soon we will part forever." The queen answered.
"Why will I not be able to come back here?"
"You will lose the part fof the soul which makes you Fearie."
"But after none of my friends is connected with this land, and in spite of it all of them travelled here without any problems. In this forest clearing with mushrooms, it was I who suffered the most, not them."
"Exactly. You bring danger to yourself and all others. Therefore you cannot come back here. If you crossed the borders of the Land of Eternal Twilight again, your Fearie soul would revive, and dark Tylwyth Teg would try to use you again."
Megan reached to the end of stairs and entered the room of the tower somewhere very deep in its interior. Darkness there could not be lightened even by the green light of the magic ball.
"But why you can not visit me on the Earth?" Megan asked. Mab clenched fists.
"My feet will never be touching its soil again" She announced coldly.
"Megan. I want you to know that you are somebody very dear for me. You are somebody without whom I could not become a person which I will be in a near future. At first I wanted to make you to stay here, to turn you into common Fearie. But now I know that your birth in a body of a woman on the Earth was a part of my destiny. I am happy that gods didn't let me destroy your father, when he tried to protect your soul from my destructive magic. I know that gods gave me in you the chance to fulfill my duty. I thank you Megan and... and I apologise."
"I don't quite understand what it is all about, but what you wanted to show me here? It's here so dark that I can see nothing." Megan was alarmed. The cold moisture in the room caused that she had wanted to be upstairs again as soon as possible.
"You can't see it, because it is behind your back." Mab replied gladly.
Pixie slowly turned around, looking carefully, but noticed nothing in the darkness. The Mab's green ball came near to her and exploded unexpectedly. The girl was knocked over with shock wave and fell down on something hard and lumpy. She felt a great pain in her whole body, as if somebody threw her between raging flames. Soon, the entire room filled iwith ntense, red light.
Shan and Ian were walking amongst guests of Mab's palace, searching for friends of the man and Mark. The girl noticed a strange glow afloat above walls surrounding the palace. The phenomenon appeared suddenly, but nobody else spotted it.
"The palace surrounded itself with a strange glitter." Shan turned to the man.
"Yes. Most probably Mab's service is preparing another surprise for guests."
"Maybe, but nobody apart from us noticed it."
"Tylwyth Teg are accustomed to such lightings. For them, it is nothing strange. Do you remember the strange lights that turned up in forests during our trip?"
"I remember it. Shining mushrooms brought us trouble."
"Stop worrying. Better let us find the rest of your group. We must soon gather togehter and come back, as soon as Mab removes a spell of binding from Megan. Hey, I can see Will standing there, on walls." The man announced pointing at Will, who was looking at the courtyard from the wall directly below it. Will looked at his friend smiling widely. Ian and Shan walked up the stairs to the walls. Shan was surprised, seeing that Will was surrounded by elves with golden hair armed in swords.
"Don't stand petrified here and come here to play with us." Ian started the conversation.
"The real fun will begin soon." Will answered looking at Shan.
"Something's wrong here." Mutant woman tried to tell something to Megan;s father, but the one he didn't listen.
"But you won't be participating in it." The black-haired man added, giving secret signs to elves. Men surrounded Karma and Ian.
"What is happening here! Don't make fun of us!" Megan's father shouted at the friend.
"I knew, that something's wrong!" Shan tried to attack Will telepathically. She wanted to take control over his mind. Unfortunately, she wasn't able to enslave the mind of the demon hiding in a man's body. Her psychic attack reflected from Will's mind and hit her. Shan staggered. She lost consciousness and started falling down, but Ian managed to catch her at the last moment.
"What the hell is happening!" Ian became nervous. He clenched fists preparing for the fight.
"Don't do it. Go where Tylwyth Teg will show you. You can see how easily I defeated the woman from X-Men who has years of trainings of using telepathic powers. You are an ordinary man, you don't have a chance against me."
Ian resigned from a fight. He knew that his old friend had been right.
"Lock them up." Will ordered men with golden hair.
"What do you want! Why are you doing it!" Ian still didn't understand what had happened around him.
"I'm doing my mission. And you should not trust me from the very beginning, because nobody returns from the Forbidden Forest unscathed. This is the only truth you must remember from our travels in our youth."
When Mark regained consciousness, it turned out that he had been imprisoned in a small chamber with tiny window, through which the starlight and moolight entered. He tried to move, but quickly found out that he had been chained to the wall with golden chains.
"Damn it!" He shouted looking for the energy needed to free himself. Unfortunately, chains were draining all that was left in his body. After a moment, a whirlpool of rose petals turned up at the chamber and Erin appeared inside it. The boy clenched fists. The elf with golden hair approached him with a saunter, and looked at him coquettishly.
"Hello. Did you wake up? I hope that Will didn't damage you..." He said.
"What do you want from me! What does all of this mean!? Where is Megan!?" DJ asked.
"This repulsive girl should not concern you anymore. Her fate will soon meet her. I don't even know what my Queen is going to do with her and it really is not my business. I have you, as the gift for help in defeating enemies of the Queen."
"Enemies of the Queen? What are you talking about!"
"Ah, you know nothing... Your friends arrived here from the Earth in order to find you. And I helped to create very beautiful garden in which they will stay forever. They will be happy."
"My friends?! Ben, Nicholas, Hope and Jessica? What did happen to them?!" Mark became nervous ans started collecting the energy to hit Tylwyth Teg irritating him. Unfortunately he encountered the empty source again.
"There was more of them. But they should also not concern you. Now we have each other!" The elf smiled blinking at the boy.
"Think how our future will look like... only you, I and this beautiful room." Erin touched DJ's face, and a little later, he hugged his body.
"Why..." The mutant asked.
"Why are you doing it?"
"Why? Strange wuestion from the mouth of somebody, for whom I want to give the earthly paradise. But perhaps you already know the answer."
Erin touched Mark's cheek again, but this time he did it with a hand of gold.
"You deprived me of my body part... but if I thought very carefully, I like this golden prosthesis even more than my real hand. The reply to your question is much simpler. I am doing it for the same reason, I have participated in orgies with women, men and children every night. I am doing it for the same reason, I sentenced the friend from childhood times to change into the magic plant in the Garden of Delight. I am doing it for the same reason, I am helping my Queen join with the Annwn land. I am doing it because I want and I can." Erin smiled coquettishly reaching for the sword.
"If we are supposed to play together, perhaps we should become similar to each other, what do you say? I will give you the same golden hand as mine..."
Hope, Sallos and the Traveller were inside the chamber with a large mirror, in which the infernal prince could observe the palace of Queen Mab. The capital city of Teg Tylwyth country was like every day and nothing pointed at dramatic events which happened behind its walls. In a picture drawn magically on the surface of the mirror there was apparently no garden created by the magic of the Queen.
"Everything there is the same as ever. I can see nothing you are talking about!" The black-haired man said, looking at the Traveller still being in his bird's form.
"I am not lying you. Mab is using a charm of the illusion such strong that even your eyes permeating darkness aren't able to notice truth in it."
"I can help." Hope cut in on a conversation.
"Do you remember how we met for the first time? I was in my astral form. If you show me where Mab's palace is, I can move there with the speed of a thought. And if you..." She turned to Sallosa.
"If you touch a hand of my physical body, I can try to show you telepathically what my astral eyes will see. It will be a short transmission, because I've done it perhaps twice so far and I'm not able to hold a longer connection with other mind.
"A brief lapse will be enough. I want to see what Mab hid from me." Sallos agreed with the girl's ida. Hope came up to him, gripped his hand and at that very moment used her abilities to leave the body. She was glad, when it turned out that her abilities had come back. Her astral form looked at the Traveller who already knew what to do. He opened the bright gate, originating in the point of the power close to the capital of the magic land. When Hope's wraithlike figure was ready for the travel, the Traveller in the bird's form took her inside the bright gate. Soon, Trance was above the Queen's palace. Sallos saw what the girl could see. Although the connection was broken after a few seconds, the demon was sure about what happened in the Annwn's capital city. The queen cheated him, creating the barrier around her palace in a form of the magic garden. However the truth was much more terrible than he supposed. The strange light appearing above Mab's castle meant that the process of opening doors to the Hell had started. Hope noticed something more. Her astral eyes could penetrate through the barrier of the garden's illusion. The girl caught sight of her friends locked up in their own minds, living in illusions given them by devilish powers, imprisoned amongst bizarre plants. When the Traveller brought her back to Sallos home, Hope immediately came back to her body.
"They are there... everyone... Jessica, Ben, Nick, Laura and this two... Loranir and Owena. They're in some trance... they cannot move. We must help them!"
"It's not so simple. Mab is opening the Gate. Border between worlds are starting to fade away. I don't know whether I will be able to destroy the magic of this garden. I still don't know which Infernal Lord's power was given to Queen."
"I don't know. The demon didn't betray name of his Lord." The Traveller replied.
"There is a way to destroy the Garden of Earthly Delights." The voice of the woman broke the silence prevailing in the dark room.
"Who dares!" Sallos said angrily. As it turned out, the elven woman from the council of elders, who had set off to search for Hope, stood in the door of the demon's residence. She found the girl following the track of spectral horses from the lake.
"I am Merlara. I am a member of the council of elders of Dark Tylwyth Teg." The elf woman introduced herself.
"We thank you for the protection." She added, nodding to the demon.
"Mab's illusion can be destroyed from the inside. The queen made a mistake letting the Stigmatic into her place." She said.
"Jessica?" Hope asked in a surprise.
"Yes. Your friend has an ability to break the illusion of the garden."
"We must track her down. As soon as possible." Sallos was ready to go.
"How will we get there?" Hope asked.
"Merlara will move us right in the middle of the illusion. Right? Do you have enough strength in yourself to do it woman?" Sallos asked.
"Yes." The woman announced, gearing herself up to cast the spell.
"Remember that we won't have too much time there. My presence will protect you from the immersion in the illusion for a short while. But if we don't find your friend and don't force her to dream her own dream inside a dream, you will also become a victim of the garden." The demon communicated his advice to Hope.
Merlara used teleportation spell in order to move Hope, Sallos and the Traveller into the very heart of the Garden of Delight.
When the sky above the land of Eternal Twilight became red from the glow surrounding Queen Mab's castle, the witch Matilda already had lost almost all of her allies. Some of them chose the real Wild Hunt, when elven wizard had freed the Celestial Boar, and others died from swords, arrows and the magic of dark elves. Matilda saw bloody glitter over the forest and laughed, because she knew that the attempt to stop her Queen was futile.
"Your plan didn't help you! The queen completed her ritual and soon will become the real queen of this world. And the guardian of the border between dimensions must be dead, just like all her friends!" The witch screamed raising her cane above the head.
Grathgor looked at the wizard with an anxiety. For the first time he didn't know what to do. He had a chance to destroy the witch who threatened his countrymen, but he also knew that soon a much more serious fight was supposed to break out. Matilda looked at elves with great hate. Undead Will and few kings were waiting for orders of the witch.
"We're ready! We're waiting!" Elven archers lost patience because the moment of a silence was too long. Grathgor watched his warriors. It looked like he had tried to gather his thoughts, to force oneself to say the only words which were appropriate in such a moment. He sheathed his sword asking silently other warriors to do the same.
"Matilda! The victory belongs to you. We are coming back to our forest and we won't interfere in matters of Queen Mab and her manor house." The man said with an effort. Lamruil came up to him in order to protect him with the magic, in case the witch would decide to break the old rules.
"We must come back." Grathgor spoke.
"Our forest gives us power. Only there we will be able to defend ourselves against Mab's power. The victory over Matilda gave us only a moment of peace before what is inevitable." He said to the old friend.
Warriors weren't pleased with the retreat from the battlefield, but they very well understood the decision of their leader. They knew that they will be able to demonstrate the bravery very shortly, when Mab decides to erase them from the world like an anomaly like she had always thought of them. They knew that songs about their glorious deaths could be made, songs that nobody would write about them in the new world.
When last of warriors disappeared in the forest thicket, Matilda felt even greater self-confidence.
"We are following them. We will send them to the Hell and we will make new members of our Wild Hunt." The witch hissed to the wizard.
"It is against the Law." Will replied quietly.
"The old law is no longer there, and our new queen will praise us for destroying these outcasts." The old woman announced.
Hopa, Sallos and the Traveller who changed into the night owl sitting on the shoulder of the Prince of Hell were walking along the stone path in the heart of coniferous forest. After crossing the border of the Garden, they appeared inside the illusion of somebody of their improsoned friends. Their appearance changed according to expectations of the vision, therefore they both looked like the couple of ordinary mountain tourists. Sallos instructed the girl.
"Remember that we must find the Prophetess, your friend as soon as possible. We cannot start conversations with anybody else. Firstly it doesn't make a sense because nothing here is real, secondly probably nobody will recognize you."
"I understand. I also want to find Jessica quickly. If what you told me is true..."
"Unfortunately, that's true. Blood-red red skyover the Land of Eternal Twilight means that the Queen began the ritual of opening the Doors. We must break it as soon as possible."
"I can see the fire. Somebody is making a bonfire!" The night owl spoke with a human voice noticing the indication of a human activity in the darkness of the forest.
"We must go there." Sallos announced. When three of them were close to the light source, it turned out that the campsite had made by Laura Kinney and Loranir. They both were sitting on a knocked over trunk of the tree, looking at flames burning in the middle of the forest clearing. Laura turned around, noticing approaching people. Loranir got up in order to see them better. Sallos looked around, noticing nobody else.
"Don't worry about us!" He said to Laura and Loranir.
"We are looking for our own forest clearing." He added snuggling Hope. When he disappeared in thickets with the girl, Laura looked at the long-haired man.
"You said that we would be here alone."
"How was I supposed to know that somebody else will go into this remote place? I thought that only we like such a dark, romantic scenery."
"All right... they simply frightened me a bit. After all we talked about..."
Loranir sat down closer the girl. He embraced her and hugged her.
"I'm happy that you went with me on this trip." He said smiling. After a short moment of silence he started kissing her.
Sallos, Hope and the Traveller found their way to the next illusion. They went along a wooden fence covered by a green moss. The enclosure separated a little grove from beautiful, extensive meadows. There was a morning, or more accurately a moment at which the Sun emerges from behind the horizon. The air was cold and the milk-white fog settled above the earth.
"I wonder if it's Jessica's vision..." Hope thought aloud.
"No. Your friend isn't an owner of the sword forged in the Annwn Land. It is a dream of the liminal zone guardian." The Traveller, in the form of the bird, shared his observations.
"How do you know?"
"A moment ago I was high up in the air and I could see what is hidden behind the hill."
"We must go further. Only a contact with a dreaming person will let us leave this illusion and entry to the next one." Sallos stopped the conversation.
After a few minutes of the walk, the entire group came at a little forest clearing. On the other side of wooden fence, there was a forest cottage, and two people nearby it. In one of them, Hope recognised Owena, but the man with long, grey hair, dressed in dark clothes and a hat was unknown to her. The blonde didn't notice wanderers, because she was looking in other direction. The old man looked at Sallos, but didn't react. Owena was holding a sword. She was worn out and looked like a person standing with an effort.
"Your breath is chaotic and holding the sword is starting to be too difficult for you. But it is a beginning. I hit you with one of the most weak spells I know. If using the magic of the sword is so difficult for you, I will have to look for somebody new, somebody who has true talent for being the guardian." The long-haired man spoke.
"No!" Owena shouted.
"I can do it! I'm able to use the sword! Didn't it choose me? Don't you remember?"
"I told you that it was a fairy tale, which I told you only so you can became more confident in yourself. But now I can see that I made a mistake! You can't tell the truth from a fiction. How can you exist in the world in which finding the difference between an illusion and the reality is a key to staying alive?"
"Attack me one more time! I won't disappoint you! I'm able to use the protective magic of the sword!" The girl was desperate.
"If you want..." The old man said smiling maliciously. The locket with a pentagram on his neck glistened with a blue lighting and two balls of blue light appeared in his hands. The man hurled them at Owena. The girl deflected the first one, but the second one, flying from other direction, hit her, turning her over to the ground and tore the sword out from her hand. Owena got up very quickly, holding her aching shoulder.
"You aren't ready." The man said coldly.
"Should we not help her?" Hope asked Sallos.
"No. She is affected by her past, or the memory about the past which is still in her head. She must cope with it herself."
The three of travellers entered the thick, forest fog and disappeared in it. When Hope opened her eyes, it turned out that she had been in some big, American city. Something bad happened, because people fled in panic, and alarms of police vans were heard all around.
"What does it mean?" Sallos asked looking at the uniform into which his clothes changed. He was wearing a black costume with red shoes and gloves. He was holding a red trident. Hope looked at him, then at herself and the Traveller. The girl was dressed in a white dress with black gloves and shoes. Former companion of Geralt took the form of a white cat.
"We're in the US. I know who dreamt of becoming a superhero saving the world from the crisis of this type. It's Match's illusion, I'm sure about it. Come on, we're going the opposite way than all these people." Trance suggested. After a moment, it turned out that she had been right about the identity of the author of a new vision. Match stood in the middle of the street. He was dressed in a red uniform with painted flames. His head burnt, similarly as his hands. Hope recognised Songbird from Thunderbolts, Thor Girl, Quantin Quire, Magik, Colossus' sister, Deathlock, Luke Cage and some kind of yellow Hulk. When the girl looked upwards, it turned out that Magneto in the classic uniform, surrounded by an army of red robots, had been the opponent of her friend.
"Remember what I told you about him! We must defeat him at the first blow, otherwise we will lose!" Match screamed to his team.
"Avengers Assemble!" The mutant gave an command for the attack. The team began the fight against robots sent by the Master of Magnetism. Songbird saw Sallos, Hope and their white cat.
"Who you are! Escape from here!" She shouted.
"We will help you! I'm Ghost Girl, and it's Sallos, Son of Lucifer!" Trance announced gearing up for the help in defeating the opponent.
"What are you doing!" The Prince of the Hell wasn't happy.
"I'm trying to play a role. These illusions are kie our Danger Room."
"We must search for the Prophetess. If you are starting to like it here, that we really do not have much time."
Sallos grabbed Hope and took her towards the entry to one of buildings. The white cat followed them. The demon closed the door behind himself.
In another vision, Trance, Sallos and the Traveller, under the form of a dog, were sitting inside a car driving through desert areas of the central-west part of the United States. Dry, hot air filled the inside of the vehicle up, resembling the young mutant a trip to the small home town of her friend. When the first buildings appeared, the girl was sure. Her group finally managed to find the way to the dream in which Jessica was imprisoned.
"It's here. Jessica is here. Stop." She said to the driver.
"Are you sure about it?"
"Yes. It's a place in which Jessica went to her high school. I visited this place and it was almost the same as in this dream."
"All right. We must track her down as soon as possible." Sallos stopped the car. The girl left the car, opening the door for the traveller in a canine form. She looked all around, not noticing a single one man on the streets. The city was looking like abandoned. It resembled a film set built for westerns which which she saw as a small girl when parents had taken her to a film studio. Streets and pavements were full of sand brought by the wind from the desert. Hope turned in the street leading to a residential area, trying to remember how Jessica's mother's house looked like. Soon she found it, but it turned out that it was in a ruin and unoccupied through by nobody.
"Why did we come here?" Sallos asked.
"It's Jessica's house. I thought that we would find her here. Probably I was wrong."
"I feel nobody in this hovel." The Traveller announced.
"Strange. In all other dreams, we found the dreaming one very quickly." Sallos said.
"What is logical, because illusions of this type cannot be too big. They often spread only over the most immediate neighbourhod of the person who creates them. Why it's so different here? This city is like a maze." Sallos looked around, seeing identical houses, gloomy and vacated by all life surrounding him from every side.
"It's so extensive and complicated, as if it was built to mislead us." He added.
"Because Jessica's mind created them. She is precog, she is able to see the future, but only in the form of visions difficult to understand. In the past it was different. Jessica was much more powerful." Hope shared her knowledge about the friend.
"In what way?"
"We're calling it reality-warping. Jessica could change reality only by her thoughts. She wasn't able to control it, her own creations took the control over her life. Jessica destroyed the part of herself in order to save us from herself. She used her abilities to the change of reality on her own mind, erasing this abilities.
"Your friend is stupid."
"How could you! You don't know what she went through! What we all went through then! You're a demon! You worry only about power and strength! You would like to have somebody as she, right?" Hope became nervous.
"Who gave you this idea? I wouldn't like to have a servant more powerful than me. Think what Jessica could do if she still had these abilities. She would erase Mab out of existence and you would get back home safely."
"Hey! Stop having a pointless discussion and do what you have to do!" The Traveller shouted.
"How dare you to speak to me in this tone!" Sallos replied.
"When you wasted time, I looked around in surroundings. I found the dreaming one."
"Really?! Let us come to her!" Hope was happy.
Trance and Sallos followed the Traveller, choosing streets and lanes of the illusory city which according to him were supposed to take them to the target. Soon, it turned out that extraordinary abilities of the magical being to find the road had been effective even in the changing dream landscape created by the mind of the sleeping prophetess. The traveller led them out to one of main streets of the small town, right up to the house of Jessica's good friend, Michelle.
"I know this house. I saw it when I was in Salvation with Jessica."
"Has this place some meaning for the dreaming one? Was she born here?" The demon asked interested.
"No. But something that changed her forever happened here. Here, her real powers emerged in fuyll power and because of that her good friend died. Here, Jessica's abilities to the change of reality started getting out of control."
"She was too weak. Such people should not be given gifts, which others would use much more effectively."
"It's she. She's with Michelle... probably, because I haven't seen her. Only in a photo." Hope noticed Jessica and other black-haired girl walking on the pavement in the direction of the house. Trance wanted to say hello to Preview.
"Remember, she may not recognize you." Sallos tried to warn her, but she didn't listen to him.
"Jessica! I'm so glad that I can finally see you." Hope shouted, running up to Preview. Jessica was surprised seeing a stranger.
"Who's this?" Michelle asked.
"I don't know. I've never seen her before." Jessica replied.
"Who are you? How do you know my name?" She asked noticing Sallos standing with the dog.
"Are you waiting for us?" She was surprised. Hope moved between her and Michelle.
"Jessica! Do you remember nothing? You must remember! Megan may have not much time! The ritual of Queen Mab has already started. All Paragons are imprisoned in their own dreams and only your power can free them. You must remind yourself why you came here!"
"What do you mean, girl?" Jessica was very dissatisfied with the appearance of insistent stranger. She wanted to get rid of her as soon as possible.
"We have no time for this." Sallos whispered seeing fruitless attempts of young mutant girl. He banged his fist on the pane of the car standing close by. He broke it, and fragments of glass dashed off towards Jessica and her former friend. The traveller changed into a human form and removed Hope from the line of striking chips of glass in a flash. Slices of the pane seeped very close to Jessica, wounding her hands. Blood from her sores splashed girl's legs, then fell down to the street in the form of drops. Glass hit the illusion of Michelle, ripping her to shreds. A shock, that Jessica experienced going through the brutal death of her closest friend again, caused that the girl had recalled why she had been in the strange place and what was the real objective of her visit in the world of Eternal Twilight. She looked at bleeding hands, and then at Trance standing in the company of other unknown people.
"Hope?" She asked, still being stunned by restored memories.
"Jessica... I will help you right away..." Trance announced thinking how to bandage wounds of the friend. In the same time, the place in which Preview's blood fell was becoming more and more black. Fragments of the pavement cracked in the place of the appearance of dark stains, and the space around them filled with a red fog. Jessica ran up to Hope and Sallos, and the Traveller geared himself up to open one of his corridors. He was to escape from the world of illusions. Blackness moved along streets of the spectral city, bringing the disintegration of all its elements. Soon, the sky above Salvation became red. Clouds carrying the Preview's power gathered above, able to destroy lies of masters of the Hell.
Meanwhile, Nicholas Gleason also became a prisoner of his own dream. In his case, it developed differently than for his friends, because Mab's charm affected his animal, uncontrollable nature. The human in a body of wolf-boy was put to sleep, trapped deep into subconsciouses, but his second nature took over him entirely and created ideal world for a denizen of a forest. Wolfcub became a part of the night pack running through the forest into a darkness. He was free, like his companions and his mind was overcome with only one thought - capturing the prey. His wolfish soul was too wild to be controlled by the magic of Queen Mab, which worked on her subjects, the beings living in the captivity of their own, restricted imagination. Nicholas escaped from the group of wolves running into a forest avenue and soon left the illusion of the night forest, the prison of his own mind and emerged in the real garden around the capital of Annwn. The animal awareness still governed over his brain, but the last memories from the time when had thought as a man, returned. He knew that he had to get to the castle and rescue his friends.
Meanwhile on the Earth, Marcon and Mrs. Gwynn were cornered by the group of changellings sent by Queen Mab and her demonic ally. The old man created a protective shield around himself and waited for an attack. The blue haired girl hit first. She summoned streams of crystal gleaming water and used them against the man. The shield withstood. The changelling retreated letting her companions to act. The man in the mask on the face touched the earth under his feet and sharpened rocks grew out of it a moment later. There was more and more of them, they started approaching Marcon with a large speed. A few of them touched the surface of the magic shield, crumbling on it. Long-haired man took the locket with a pentagram out, raised it up, and his barrier expanded destroying all rock formations of the masked man. The spell made him tired, and his barrier was weakened. The man in the sunglasses attacked third. He summoned a beam of an intense light which poured over Marcon and Megan's grandmother. The long-haired wizard cast a spell of reversing colours at the last moment, saving his and old woman's eyes. When the light touched the barrier, Marcon felt a great pain, as if his skin was poured by an acid. He didn't yield again, but he was even more weakened.
"We must escape from here!" The horrified woman shouted.
"I don't know whether I will be fast enough..." Marcon replied, still breathing with a difficulty. In the same time, the black-haired girl with pointed ears and the woman holding the baby with blue skin prepared for the attack. When the child opened his eyes and raised his hand, a strange anomaly appeared around Marcon. The time and space bent on each other ordered by little demon and atried to crush the wizard and Megan's grandmother. The man had no choice. He had to risk dropping the protective barrier and teleport himself and the womand as far from the enemies as possible. When the space-time distortion whirled faster and faster, unrestricted by the magic barrier, Marcon cast a spell of the transfer. The black-haired girl also used her magic, sending two ball lightnings towards the couple of the elderly men. Marcon and the old lady disappeared. The demonic child calmed the time and space, knowing that sorcerers were already outside the range of his power.
"Did they escape from us?" Blue haired woman asked.
"No. I am sure that I hit one of them." The elven girl replied.
"If they survived, we will find them and fulfil the will of our Queen. " The child announced with a voice of an adult man.
Marcon and Megan's grandmother turned up in the hill, exactly at the same place in which the Traveller transported Megan, Mark and Shan a few days earlier. Marcon fell down on his knees. He was tired with the sudden teleportation and hard fight against Mab's changellings.
"We did it... you know... we managed to escape from someone controlling the etheric element." He said. Not hearing an reply, he started looking all around searching for his companion. Quickly, he found her, lying on the grass, holding the wound on her torso.
"No!" He shouted running up to the seriously injured woman.
"You weren't fast enough..." The elderly lady whispered.
"Lightning was faster..." She added.
"Don't move... I will cure you..." The man said reaching for the talisman.
"No. You are too weak... you cannot pass away now, because your daughter isn't ready for the lonely protection of the liminal zone."
Marcon kneeled down by the woman and touched her hand.
"I'm sorry... I wasn't able to protect you." He said with tears in his eyes.
"Don't be sorry... my time has come, it's so simple. Now I'm needed somewhere else... I can see... I can see Megan going to the same place as I... I must stop her... show her the way home..."
These were the last words of Megan's grandmother, old guardian of the liminal zone between two lands.
The redness arising from Jessica's blood mixt with the magic of the Garden of Earthly Delights moved through the garden like a violent fire, destroying every illusion on its road and freeing minds of all persons imprisoned inside it. The sky became bloody above forests and mountains created by joined minds of Laura Kinney and Loranir. The girl sleeping in a tent woke up since she sensed approaching danger. She dug herself out from under the sleeping bag, leaving the long-haired man being still in a dream state. She didn't manage to put clothes on, because the threat was too close. Dressed only in black pants, she left the tent, unsheathing her claws in hands and feet. She looked at the sky. The wave of reality hit her with intense power, smashing her dream as a lethal tornado. At the same time, the bloody sky turned up above the house in front of which the old master taught his successor. Owena looked at the strange phenomenon with a terror. She gripped the sword firmly, wanting its magic to protect her from the unknown. The destructive element was closer the girl. The grey haired man came up to Owena, smiling. He didn't change his facial expression, even when his gaze met the terrified eyes of his pupil.
"Don't fight with what is supposed to come. Go with this wind, it will take you to your real mission." These were the last words of the long-haired man. A moment later, he was ripped to shreds as the rest of Owena's dream. The strong gale of reality reached also the illusion of New York, where Match and his Avengers rescued the world from the new agenda of the Master of the Magnetism. When the sky above the city became red, Ben Hammil lead his people to the fight again. Songbird, Thor Girl, Quantin Quire, Magik, Deathlock, Luke Cage and the yellow Hulk defended the city for the last time. Match got back to the reality, where the real fight waited for him. The wave of the transformation reached Nicholas's empty dream bringing terror amongst the wolfish gang, thanks to which he gained independence from the illusion of Queen Mab.
Megan felt her body becoming a unity with a strange object on which surface her mother threw her. The glow surrounding the stone tree scorched the shirt on her back, trousers and the underwear. Soon, the rough bark touched the delicate body of the girl. Sharp, miniature spikes squeezed into hands and legs of Megan, sank into her wings, the skin on her back and buttocks. Mutant girl felt a great pain, she felt like screaming, but the black magic of the chamber she was in paralysed her body and voval cords. Tears appeared in her eyes. Mab stood in a distance from the emerging trans-dimensional gate looking at effects of tortures she sentenced her own daughter. The stone tree started the most important process in opening the gate between Earth and the Infernal Land, tearing of Megan's soul to shreds and its to create the bridge between two worlds. The girl stopped feeling her own body, when senses rebelled against her and attacked her brain with completely contrary information. Megan could see lightings of the Garden of Earthly Delights behind windows of the chamber of the gate and at the same time, she looked at her own body deeply rooted into the bark of the tree, rising above it as a disembodied being. She thought that her awareness had existed in many places simultaneously, looked at landscapes well-known to her from the childhood and at dark world full of rivers of lava incising desert plains. She could hear a lot of voices talking to her in a completely incomprehensible way, mutually outshouting one another. She tried to run away from them, to disappear somewhere, to find the place in which she would be safe for the entire eternity. In a vain, because the stone tree joined her with itself, both the body and the soul. Mab smiled seeing as pink glow appeared around the heart of Megan, which soon was supposed to open the doors to her real glory. Will turned up at the chamber of the gate. Mab looked at him surprised.
"What happened?" She asked.
"Mutants found a way to escape from the illusion of the garden." The demon announced calmly.
"How is it possible?"
"I don't know, but I feel that Sallos is with them. He is here, in the garden, in front of your palace."
"It doesn't make any difference. The ritual already began and he can't break it. Sallos will become nobody soon." The Queen was self-confident.
"You must stop them to the moment of completion of the ritual." She added.
"Of course, my queen." Will bowed to his ruler and disappeared from the chamber in order to fight with Sallos and his allies.
