Caitlin

November 26th, 2018

The next day Caitlin had a relatively normal morning. No frantic calls about creatures attacking her friends. She simply woke up, got ready, ate breakfast and set off for STAR Labs. She didn't use any magic since she wasn't sure if Austin had blocked her powers from being viewable by the monitors yet. So, Caitlin got in her car and drove to STAR Labs. When she arrived the rest of the team was already there, Joe, Cecile and baby Jenna included.

"Hey," she said. "Austin here yet?"

"No, but she didn't exactly give us a specific time," Iris responded.

"She should be here soon," Caitlin informed them. "She probably just finished shifting over to scouting."

"So who exactly is Austin?" Cecile asked. "I know that she's a spellcaster castle guard but that's all we've been told." She motioned between her and Joe.

"That's all any of us know," Cisco told her.

"We're taking a leap of faith here but I think we can trust her," Barry said.

"Well, you guys know more about this magic stuff than we do," Joe said.

"And I know more than them," Austin said as she appeared in the room. "So, you guys ready?"
"For what?" Ralph asked.

"For a lot of information," Austin said.

"What could you possibly have learned in one night?" Cisco asked.

"Not much, but I did manage to put the blocker on the monitor so Caitlin can use her magic freely," Austin continued. Caitlin sighed in relief. "But as for what information I have, it was stuff that I already knew, I just didn't have time to share it yesterday."

"Which is?" Joe asked.

"These guys you're dealing with, I've dealt with them before," Austin said.

"Okay, that you could have mentioned yesterday," Ralph said.

"It was a long time ago, their operation has changed drastically since then," Austin clarified. "Plus, I wasn't one hundred percent certain that this was actually them. I went through some of my notes and a few of their patterns are the same, just a lot more drastic."

"So who are they?" Barry asked. Austin looked down for a second, avoiding eye contact with anyone.

"Austin?" Caitlin asked. Austin sighed.

"They used to call themselves the Equalists," she finally said. "They were a peaceful group who fought to increase spellcaster interaction with the mortal world. Many members believed that spellcasters could help the mortal world, end wars and such."

"They have clearly abandoned that ideology," Iris grumbled.

"Yeah, what changed?" Ralph asked. Austin took another pause.

"Okay, what is your problem?" Cisco finally asked.

"Cisco!" Caitlin exclaimed.

"No, it's fine," Austin said. "I am acting strange I know. This just isn't an easy story for me to tell."

"Why do I get the feeling you've more than dealt with this group before," Iris challenged.

"I wasn't a part of it if that's what you're insinuating," Austin said softly. "But a good friend of mine was. He joined when he was eighteen. He was living in the mortal world most of the time and he had family there." He voice was shaking as she spoke and her eyes met the floor. Her entire demeanor had changed from last time they spoke to her.

"You still haven't told us what happened to the equalists," Ralph said but he spoke softer than before.

"For the first few years the group was peaceful, they would stage protests and tried to spread their message, there were a few altercations but nothing too extreme," Austin finally added. "Then, there started to be rumors going around that there was a law in the works that cut off all access to the mortal world. When the king finally confirmed the rumors the equalists began to formulate a plan. I knew some of what they were planning to do but none of it was dangerous. At least, it wasn't supposed to be. So I didn't do anything about it, not right away anyway."

"So what did they do?" Cecile asked when Austin stopped talking again. The rest of the room had differing emotions but few others talked. Iris looked like she was in journalist mode, Ralph and Cisco were exchanging glances somewhere in between belief and disbelief. Barry was stone silent and Joe just looked confused.

"Well, even though we have a king, there is a council that had a say in new laws. It is mostly made up of members of other powerful and ancient families. Essentially the lords and ladies of the realm," Austin explained. "So they knew that if they could sway enough of the council they could make sure the law didn't pass. They planned to have different group members track down and sway council member's votes. Like I said, they were a peaceful group. Unfortunately, this specific event agitated them so adrenaline was running high and good decision making was low. One member of the council was Lady Isabella, she had recently taken over the seat from her father after he passed. She was full of new ideas, cutting off access to the mortal world included. No one expected them to succeed but one member decided to try anyway."

"Okay, this is a lot of background," Ralph said. "When are we getting to the magical duals?"

"Ralph, now is really not the time," Caitlin said. "I'd kind of like to learn what happened in my home realm." She was serious too, there was so much that she had missed and Austin was her window to what could have been.

"Sorry but we don't usually do story time," Ralph said. "Normally it's a lot of bouncing ideas off of each other or reading information for ourselves."

"I have it written down but it's not in English," Austin said coldly.

"Milic?" Caitlin asked. Austin nodded.

"Milic?" Iris asked.

"Spellcaster language, it's what I speak in when I cast spells," Caitlin clarified.

"Yeah, well, we can't read that so I think that we should let Austin keep talking," Barry said but he seemed apprehensive. She didn't entirely blame him though. This story seemed hard for Austin to tell and it was certainly hard for her to here. Not because anything bad had happened yet but because it was clearly going that way. She didn't like to imagine that something could go that wrong.

"Okay, go on Austin," Cecile told the redhead.

"The equalist stopped Lady Isabella as she was leaving a press conference, they caught her as she was trying to sneak out the back," Austin continued. "When he stopped her Lady Isabella wasn't happy but agreed to the conversation. After about an hour the conversation got heated and the equalist drew his wand. Lady Isabella pulled hers out as well but the other caster disarmed her. I don't know what happened exactly. The confrontation was not part of the plan but Lady Isabella was not the kind to play nice so I assume something made him snap. Isabella was blasted across the room and she tried to reason with him. No one knows exactly what happened. Lady Isabella didn't know who the equalist was and the equalists themselves hadn't sent anyone specific so there was no way to track him down. Lady Isabella came to the castle later to report the incident. I was in the room when she explained that the equalist had almost killed her. She heard them start to cast a death spell but something made them stop. She was too freaked to comprehend what was happening. Eventually the caster lowered his wand and left."

"Was she okay?" Cecile asked. Austin nodded.

"She was fine, a little shook up, but fine. She was too freaked out to stick to her guns and pulled her support for the new law and it didn't pass," Austin said. "After that the equalists changed. I don't know what their new name became. They became less vocal and drifted into the shadows. I heard through the grapevine that their goals had changed. They believed that spellcasters were superior to mortals, not equal. We caught one member early on when they were still changing how they operated and they wouldn't stop screaming about the power and possibilities of spellcaster magic. After that we never heard of them again. It was assumed that they had disbanded became there were members of the equalists that realized the ways things were going and opted out before things got too bad. We though that the may not have enough members to be a threat. Clearly we were wrong."

"So when that equalist attacked Lady Isabella as got results they decided to follow his lead?" Iris asked.

"It appears so," Austin said.

"Did they ever find him?" Caitlin asked. Austin paused.

"Not that I heard," she responded carefully. "We've never seen anything quite like that though so I don;t think he's a threat anymore. Just a situation that got out of hand."

"Yeah, and doomed the mortal world," Ralph said.

"Yeah, what the hell?" Cisco asked. "I'm not saying that it's one dude's fault but he attacked this girl and then suddenly all of his friends are out for blood. That is one messed up group of people."

"Yeah, we've got to put an end to this group before anyone actually dies," Barry said. "I'm sure whoever this guy was didn't intend for things to go this far and he'll have to live with what's he's done but we can't change the past. Only make sure the future ends differently."

"Yeah, but I think that beating this group is going to be harder than we thought," Joe said. "Rebel and power group are no jokes."

"We've fought Nazis, we can take some magical rebels," Iris said.

"Okay, so how do we fight these guys?" Cisco asked, finally appearing to be fully on board.

"We outsmart them," Austin said. "They are obsessed with power, their goal seems to be to make mortals subservient to spellcasters. They are going to try to recruit those with ancient and powerful magic. But brute force doesn't always win."

"How do we outsmart them?" Iris asked.

"We take the fight to them," Austin said. "We won't learn anything new from here, at least not yet. We need to know more about them so we will know how to fight them."

"So what are you saying?" Joe asked. "You're going to spy on them in the Spellcaster Realm?"

"No, we are," Austin said.

"As in us?" Barry asked.

"Yes, at least some of you, you can trade off, but I can't do this alone and I can't tell the other guards," Austin said. "They might raise the alarm or think that we're crazy and even if that doesn't happen they will definitely find out that there is a whole group of mortals who know about spellcaster magic and Caitlin and I will both be dead or worse."
"Expelled," Cisco chimed in trying to make light of the situation. Caitlin his him on the back of his head.

"I hate to break it to you but they might also realize that something is up when they discover a bunch of mortals hanging out in the Spellcaster Realm," Iris said. "Isn't that what the monitors are for?"

"Monitors monitor magic, not lack of magic. One single person, or even a small group of people, not using magic won't set off any alarm bells because magic is still everywhere in the realm."

"But won't they recognize Caitlin?" Barry asked.

"I can put a charm on her that makes people believe they've never seen her before," Austin said. "If they already haven't seen her then it won't matter."

"What about us?" Cisco asked. "We've seen her."

"I'm going to mix it with a potion that negates the effects on mortals and anyone whose magical essence I infuse with it so that I won't forget her either," Austin explained. "It should only take me a day or so, I need to gather some ingredients."

"So we're really doing this? Going to the realm?" Ralph asked.

"Wait, what if people realize we don't have magic?" Iris said. "I think the lack of wands will give us away."

"I have some of my older models at home so you can at least have a wand with you," Austin explained. "As for not having magic, most of you are metahumans. At the very least you can openly use your powers. I can teach you spells that would create the same effect as your powers if you really need to. And Iris, magic doesn't affect you unless you want it to so in a way you do have some magic. Caitlin and I can take care of any real magic we need."

"Uhm, hi sorry," Cecile said. "We have a baby."

"Joe, Cecile, you can stay behind, we need someone to watch the city and warn us of anything going wrong," Austin said. "And we can make sure to always have at least one superhero stay in the city, Ralph, Barry and Cisco can tag team."

"You've just got this all figured out don't you?" Joe asked.

"I'm a guard, planning and implementing is ninety five percent of what I do," Austin said. "The other five percent is thinking on my feet and being awesome at magic." She punctuated that last part with a little hair flip, her smile finally returning.

"So when do we leave?" Barry asked.

"In a few days, I want to make sure I get Caitlin's charm ready and teach you as much as I can about the realm before we just jump in," she explained. "Now I really should get back on duty but I'll work on the potion tomorrow and start lessons after that." With that, Austin pulled her wand out and disappeared