The Phantom of the Night

by Tigris Euphrates

Christine P. Shelton of Salt Lake City, Utah accidently runs across the gargoyle she names Phantom, resulting her becoming involved in a massive feud of warring halves of the Children of Oberon. Illustrated. (homepage: http://www.miniclan.org/tigris/saga.

6. Millennium

Created: Saturday, May 25, 1996
Completed: Tuesday, December 17, 1996
This version is current as of: February 29, 2000
Revision and editing by Cinnamon

This is an original work, not associated with the Walt Disney Corporation. No copyright infringements intended. All rights to the elements of this work reserved by the author. None of this content is in anyway directly copied from any Disney publication. "Gargoyles" belongs to Walt Disney Studios.

This fanfic is rated for all audiences, and contains nothing sexual or improper of any nature. I would recommend it be rated G.

Historian's note: The timeline is a little bit cockeyed. For all sake and reason, it's been a dozen years since the end of "Phantom of the Night". However, according to Avalon time, they would have left sometime after the year 2030, right? Well, they did, now they're in 2010 - you'll learn why in a minute.

Dasha

Sacramento, California

2010

"But I don't care about that anymore! If he's alive, then I must leave here!"

"No Tigris, think of what you are doing! He'll go mad if you try and meet him now!"

"But there must be some other way than hiding here and holding back the truth."

"The truth must sometimes be withheld to avoid contention."

Tigris huffed to herself, spun on one foot, and walked down the corridor of the intertwining tree branches that made up Cassandra's gargoyle sanctuary, with brewing animosity. She'd been locked up in this blasted town for twelve years now, she was not going stay here a moment longer.

Her room was filled with things, Tigris noted with disgust. Human things, fairy things, all things she didn't need. Pausing, she looked in the mirror Cassandra had given her. It reflected a tall, slim gargoyle girl of the human maturity of six with arm-wings, dressed in a trim off-white dirty fighter's smock, with a short sword belted to her waist. She angrily flung a bit of her blue hair from her face, blue like everything else about her. She shifted her sword, thoughtfully. This was the only thing she needed.

"She still won't listen to you, hm?"

Tigris sighed. "No, she wouldn't."

"She doesn't like the fact that you have fallen out of her power with my help."

"She doesn't like you?"

"No, she doesn't. I don't like how she uses your clan."

"Uses my clan?"

"Yes. How she transfigures your bodies and controls your minds to get her ends."

Tigris furrowed her eyebrow. Cassandra wouldn't do that... would she? But then she thought about her love. Cassandra had transformed and twisted his body... before he had supposedly died...

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said anything." the voice apologized.

"No, I saw her do it to my love. If what you say is true, that is why she doesn't want me to be with him, for then I would begin to see the truth."

"You're intelligence never ceases to amaze me, Tigris."

"Do not flatter me. I can go to Christyne, she will know what to do."

The disembodied voice sighed. "Give her my best."

"I will, Demeter."

Pointing one finger at the mirror, she chanted, "Chalavem Serenea Novim Carachim!"

The mirror began to glow, ever so slightly with an unearthly light.

"Take me to Christine and Phantom." she commanded it.

With that, she put her great oversized adolescent foot through the mirror, and stepped on through.

The spell left her hanging in the air over a vast mountain range, not unlike her own from home in the San Andreas. She spread her arms, and frilled her wings, lowered her left arm and banked in that direction.

~Was this Avalon? It looked so much like her home...

From the dark night sky, she could make out many valley in these hills. There were human roads and fences... this was not Avalon.

Tigris set down triumphantly in a glade, far from the reach of any humans, and began to scout out her surroundings. There was a strong sensation of magic here. She tried to feel it's source. It was coming from... right behind her.

Tigris turned around, looking up toward the mountain. She saw a small flame in the air before her, and watched it go out. Then, the air before her erupted in a brilliant plume of flame. The flames began to blur and coalesce into a shape... that of a young gargoyle girl of only four year old. She hung in the air as the flames licked her skin into existence, and then faded away. The girl flared her wings, and dropped to the ground before Tigris.

Tigris knelt down by the little girl.

She was emerald green colored, with delicate double wings, dressed in a purple jumper cut off at her ankles, with a fire-breathing dragon emblem emblazoned upon it. She looked at the blue gargoyle with the mid-arm wings staring at her. The girl stood up to her full height, trying to look bigger, flaring her wings. "Who on earth are YOU?"

"I am Tigris of the Clan of Cassandra the Fay." she replied automatically.

The girl tipped her head to one side. "Are you sure?"

Tigris pretended to thoughtfully glance off to one side, and then back to her. "The last time I checked."

The green gargoyle shrugged. "Well, you're one of us, so mother will want to meet you anyway."

With a flourish, the green one turned her back to Tigris, and began to disappear in flame just as she had appeared. Tigris was startled to realize the flames were now leaping about her skin as well, but they did not feel hot to her. She stared in fascination at the tickling but cool flames for a moment, before she realized that the scenery had changed.

She stood in a lit cave of some sort, upon a metal rampway covering the abyss below her feet. Tigris gasped a moment. Her green skinned companion was walking down the rampway, lighting the cave with the flit of flame the leapt like a candle flame from her up pointed talon.

"MOTHER! I FOUND A NEW ONE!" she called down the passage, and began to scamper on all fours down the gap between the two rock faces. Tigris slowly began to follow her, measuring her steps carefully.

Sacramento, California

August 19, 1998

Tigris awoke in a daze. At first all she saw were bright lights dancing before her vision. There were some muffled sounds around her. Tigris caught sight of something large and blue, and focused as hard as she could on it. Then the voice began to come clear.

"Tigris? Can you hear me?" came Cassandra's voice

Young Tigris moaned. "I... I'm still alive."

Cassandra sighed. "Barely. You're going to have a scar, but I managed to pull you through. Again."

` Tigris blinked. Her benefactor was nearly hovering over her, as she struggled to get up. Steve and the others were nearby. She was back with her own clan, not the Clann na ochter oidhche bheithir, but home with Cassandra. She was alive. Cassandra touched her shirt, right in the middle of her chest. "Right here."

Once before, when Tigris was very little, she remembered that, ever since she had been hatched, she'd been the weakest of the newborns in her rookery. Pollution, they had said, had made her ill while in her egg. She had been young then, but still wanted to live, and pleaded, with Cassandra for her life. Cassandra had granted it to her, with the condition that Tigris bear Cassandra's blue color throughout her body. So, to this day, Tigris was blue in every whit.

"I'm not out until three strikes." Tigris announced.

Cassandra frowned. "Don't even joke about that - one more like his and I can't guarantee you'll survive." Then Tigris thought of Matthew.

"Where is Matthew?" she asked with anxiety. The last thing she remembered was him, holding her, as she died. She needed to get to him!

Cassandra's smiled failed her. "Matthew is gone, honey."

Tigris's face became suddenly stricken. Cassandra reached to grasp her hand as Steve held her in his arms. Tigris cried with them for an hour before falling asleep again.

2010

"Someone's been feeding you a line, Tigris." Christyne noted, testing the heat of the tea before handing it to Tigris. " A lot of what she's telling you simply isn't true. We came home from Avalon immediately after the battle."

"I think Cassandra has been wanting to hang onto you for longer than has been healthy." Phantom observed.

"I will no longer be hers." Tigris stated flatly, sampling the tea.

"However, there is much truth in what the other fey (Demeter -- was that her name?) ...in what she told you." Christyne went on. "Yes, Cassandra manipulates you and your clan's genetic makeup -- she's trying to help you survive through future generations. It just so happens that you and Matthew are the two who have been affected the most by her changes. Human beings do the same thing, they try and correct problems in their children before they are born, so that the child has the best chance at a full and productive life."

"She should not have lied to me."

"She didn't." Phantom cut in. "She just didn't give you the whole story."

"She is a manipulating fay, and I will not have her over me."

"So aren't all fay manipulating?" Phantom inquired. "Cassandra doesn't see your future, and has been trying to protect you. Besides, she is also under Oberon's edict to find a replacement for her to watch your clan and to go home to Avalon along with the other fay. She's been circumventing it for a dozen years now, the only reason Oberon puts up with it is because Cassandra's sort of like a 'daddy's girl' with Oberon."

"You're different. You're not as manipulative." Tigris corrected.

"Not really. Tanya has yet to learn to tell when I'm manipulating her. We all grew up with it, Cassandra included. However, Cassandra was something of a unique child -- Probably the youngest child ever to come of Oberon's loins."

Tigris glanced over at the other girl -- Tigris's age -- sitting in the opposite seat. She seemed to be protesting something, but Phantom was ignoring her completely.

"How many children do you have?" Tigris inquired.

Christyne smiled warmly. "Let me explain something about Tanya. Sharm came to us -- many years ago, with a plan. She had been working with Phantom together to create a paradox with magic."

"Paradox?"

"Using natural, human, and fay magic together." Phantom explained.

"Human and fay magic cancel each other out, they mutually annihilate one another. That is why the two are so different, and why humans looked at them as evil for a lot of history. Conversely, that is why human magic CANNOT enter Avalon - it would destroy Avalon. Natural magic occurs most strongly in nature itself, and in dragons, phoenixes, and other such beings. Natural magic usually cannot be tapped through any means than through such creatures, their objects, etc. They are the only channels of Natural magic. Matthew actually rode a unicorn when he was Tanya's age."

Christyne paused, and then shook her head. "Anyhow, Sharm used the annihilating effect to bring out the Natural magic, and using all three types of power, she created a paradox of magic -- far stronger than any of the original magic. She and another fay, a brother of Oberon named Hephaestus, used it to create a talisman designed to burn down the walls of time and space. That was over ten millennia ago... Sharm had traveled back with the finished product to create it. This time she had decided to try it again, but with a living being. She'd found the first time that a living being is always necessary to direct it, and so to prevent several accidents they had with the last one."

"She got excited about it when we left Avalon -- she never told us why, but just started arranging the experiment." Christyne added. "It took months before I even consented to let Sharm experiment on my egg. You should have seen her face blanch when I told her to get her own! Oh, what a Kodak moment!" she laughed. Tigris smiled.

"When Tanya hatched, she had the power to travel across time and space with a thought -- by burning down the walls of time and space. Sharm calls her the 'Firedrake Gate'. I've seen many eggs hatch, but never one that hatches outside of space and time. Don't forget time passes differently on Avalon. We were there for many years, and Tanya's birth threw us right back to before it even started!"

Tanya, in the chair, glanced at Tigris with an unimpressed look. Tigris recalled how she had first met Tanya -- her ability to disappear and reappear in flames.

Christyne continued. "The other children were laid about once every few years. Phantom began to work Sharm's magic on all of them. Corala was hatched in 2003, and can move any object just by wanting to. Carribea was hatched in 2008 -- she's napping. She appears to have the ability to create things out of thin air, and to turn things to air. There are five other eggs down in the rookery."

"Five?" Tigris asked. "How do you look after them all?"

Christyne glanced at Phantom, who smiled. "I... pulled in some favors on that one." he answered. "You see, we've been exploring the world for the ten years it took for Tanya to be born, leaving her here, under the protection of someone... special. You'll meet her later."

Christine laughed, continuing her previous explanation. "When Tanya was born, she flung us back in time twenty five years! It was like we never left for Avalon! We actually had to hide for five years to be certain we wouldn't affect the timestream!"

"Favors?" Tigris asked.

Christyne laughed. "A dragon that owed him a favor for a service Phantom had rendered her a while back. Phantom asked her to guard and protect the eggs."

"Her magic is a great influence on the paradox magic." Phantom added.

Tigris was agape. "A real dragon?" Phantom only grinned. Tigris sighed, and laid back in the chair. "I wanted to ask you something."

"Ask away." Christyne nodded, setting her teacup aside.

"What happened to Matthew?"

There was silence. Even Tanya's "stop ignoring me!" demeanor melted.

"The last I ever saw of him was on that night. He vanished after we left." Phantom put his tea cup aside.

Tigris's face fell. "Then I'll never find him."

"You two will be together and happy soon enough." Christyne replied lightly. "It's time to go looking for him."

Tigris's expression was baffled. "How can you know that?"

Phantom promptly intervened before Christyne even had the chance to tackle the question.

The small holographic figure on the table flopped down into a chair, spreading her wings over the chair lazily, and the voice in the speakers groaned.

"No no no... you have to vaporize the graphite in a vacuum, or else it won't burn." Christyne muttered.

"Humans have been burning carbon for six thousand years, I don't see why a little Xenon gas should make any difference." Sean replied with a bored tone, staring at the ceiling above him and the holographic figure.

"I'm guessing you should get a lot of black powder when you're done with that." Nova noted, leaning back in a chair, and pointedly ignoring the argument going on between Christyne and Sean. She was thinking out loud.

"Yes... just dump the black stuff into a bottle of kerosene."

"Kerosene? Why on earth would you want to do that after you went to all this effort to vaporize the graphite in the first place?" Sean noted.

Christyne ignored him and went on. "You'll start to get little brown crystals in the bottle..." The hologram held up a large brown sheet that shimmered in the holographic light, as an example. "It's basically a crystal of C-60."

"C-60? How do those crystals interface with the San Crystals?"

"They're non-magical, I know, but no matter how much magic you force into a signal, you can only push its strength so far."

"So why not have the reaction under pressure?"

"Some of us work better without pressure. Especially some carbon-based life forms I could tell you about."

"So Marcus was telling us the other day." Nova nodded for Christyne to continue.

Christyne scowled. "I've got to meet this Marcus character you keep talking about, sometime. Anyhow, the interface is flawless, 100% signal strength, no degradation."

Sean snorted with disbelief. There was a beep as on one screen adjacent to Sean, a readout began to appear.

"My initial readings on the interface." Christyne observed.

Sean scowled. "Did you make these up?"

"No, I just told the computer not to take them out to as many decimal places as you insist on."

Nova waved at Sean, and went on with her questions. "So, how does it replenish signal strength between the San crystals?"

"It doesn't, it's a superconductor, therefore it never loses signal strength... hang on a minute." Christyne cut off as a blue figure appeared in the hologram, whispering into Christyne's ear.

"You've been arguing with them for two straight hours. Want to take a break for a while?"

"Puh! You're the one who tore me away from this last time."

"When?"

"In college, remember?"

Phantom sighed and laughed to himself a moment. "Fine, but Sharm is here, and they're planning the trip."

"Alright, I'll be along in a few minutes."

"Next time you're in the area, I'd be glad to introduce you to Marcus." Nova said, once Christyne turned back to them.

"How much of that can you hear? I had the pickups turned down."

"Down, but not off. If you're leaving we can discuss room temperature superconductors later." Nova noted.

Christyne sighed. "A lot of those superconductor crystals are going into this trip, so I'm kinda working with a deadline. TURN DOWN THE CD IN THERE! Sorry, Nova..."

Sean giggled a little to himself. "Alright, the electrical interface is good, but what about the magical element?"

"All of the signal is going to meet resistance -- laws of physics. I'm still trying to relate magic within the laws of physics, though." Christyne sighed, shifting her wing's positions on the chair. "It should react the same way as any other San Crystal, just this one was created with chemistry."

Nova frowned. "I don't think that the laws of physics apply to magic. In fact I don't think that any scientific laws apply to magic. That's what makes magic, well... magic. It can not be explained. Each time we think that we understand it, something happens that shows us we that we know nothing. Take Rem for example. There's no way any of us could have predicted what happened with her." Nova threw her hands up, indicating the room. "Look what happened here. I would have never dreamed of something like this."

"So why doesn't the rest of the world have this?" Sean inquired.

Christyne waved a pad of holographic papers, and dropped them at her feet. "Why doesn't the world have a fool-proof nuclear reactor? President cut off all funding for the research, leaving it to private companies like you and me."

"Nuclear...?!!!!" he began, but Christyne waved him off.

"I didn't say we were working on anything like that..."

"Alright, both of you lay off." Nova demanded, making a spreading motion with her paws. "Christyne, we'll take a look at your numbers. If it's true you have ICBMs at your disposal to work with, I'd imagine you could sell a few secretly and get the materials you need to build whatever you want."

"Our plans, Nova, were to build an observatory here in the mountain. The problem we're faced with is linking the computer network with yours. We've bought out a failing nuclear missile plant in the area called Alliant TechSystems. Sharm insisted on renaming it 'Xanatos TechSystems' and making it a subsidiary of some larger company I've never even heard of, instead of making our own company from it. She seems to favor safety over investment."

"There's enough junk around this planet already, we don't need to add to it. Dismantle the ICBM plant and put them to work doing R&D." Sean noted. "Why don't you just use one of our sats for the link? It's not like we we're running short of them."

"I don't know -- give me a TCP address on one of your satellites, and I can try a traditional logon and see if it's traceable. If we have to, we can take a few of our superconductive crystals, and a few San Crystals, and set up a processor bias and link to one of those TAT computer centers with optical cable. I don't know your system, so you'd have to set up an interface for me. There's no way anyone can trace that unless they trip on the wire."

"Now that's a little more reasonable." Sean laughed. "Your parts are already in the mail."

"Take your time, remember the point is to keep anyone from finding them."

"Oh don't worry. Nobody will ever find them." He grinned.

"What was that about?" A younger voice inquired. Christyne turned away from the computer console, to where Tigris stood at a respectful distance, watching.

Christyne motioned to the cave. "Eventually, we're hoping to get all this converted into a home instead of a cave. The computers we've been kind of tossing together have magical components that I'm working together with other gargoyles to create. No human has a computer like them."

"Other gargoyles? Where do they live?"

Christyne picked up the smaller blue gargoyle, and held her next to the computer displays. "If I told you that, I'd have ta' kill you." Christyne laughed.

"Are they in hiding? Where did you find them?"

"Yes... well, let's just say their phone number came to me in a dream..."

"Alright! Alright! Enough with the techno-babble already!" A light, chipper voice added to the chaos. "Are you two coming or not?"

The bright haired woman with her hands on her hips was regarded with a sigh from the gargoyles. "Alright, we're coming Sharm."

"Good! Hurry up already!"

Shifting the heavy thirteen-year-old from one hip to the other, Christyne regarded the little blue girl in the dirty white smock and short sword for a moment. "You know, if I were human, I doubt I'd even be able to pick you up."

"COME ON, CHRISTINE!" Sharm declared, pulling Christyne by the wing into the other cavern. "Stop stalling!"

"Hey hey! Easy on the wing already! We're coming." Christyne replied, following. "Forgive me for not being anxious to go off on another wild goose chase."

"This won't be a chase. You'll see. We'll find out exactly where he is."

"Why am I not relieved?"

"Just listen." Sharm proclaimed, as Christyne and Tigris moved over by Phantom and Tanya. Sharm was standing at the front of the room, like she were about to give a presentation before a bunch of stuffy corporate leaders.

"Where's Mandy?" Christyne inquired.

"We're coming." said another voice. Tigris watched with a strange sense of curiosity as a thirty-three year old Mandy D. Felis, her husband Thom, and five children were hurried into the room. "Sorry, there was an accident at the mouth of the canyon."

"Everyone just sit down." Sharm said. "Thank you for bringing her, you and the children are welcome to leave whenever you'd like." This last was addressed to Thom and the five young humans -- all girls. Tigris was tempted to ask Christyne what all their names were, but resisted the temptation.

"Who said we weren't coming with you?" Thom asked lightly.

"I did." Mandy replied officiously. She reached over and kissed Thom on the cheek. "Thanks for the lift, now get the children to bed. It's my destiny to be on these adventures, not yours."

"Take care of yourself." Thom replied.

"That's my job." Sharm interjected.

"I told my friend about you, but he didn't believe me." One of Mandy's children, one of the older twins of about twelve years old, was saying to Tanya.

"Where does he live? Maybe I'll bug him in his sleep." Tanya laughed.

"Alright, time to go." Thom said, trying to shuffle the human children out of the room.

"Wait! Mommy? Can I spend the night with Anna?" Tanya begged Christyne, in a somewhat Sharm-like manner.

Christyne glanced at Thom. "It'd be for a more than one night, I'd say."

Thom shrugged. "Sure... I suppose the neighbors won't notice if we suddenly sprout a gargoyle on our roof overnight."

"I'll stay in the basement in Anna's room!" Tanya added, hopefully. Tigris felt a little uncertain. She'd been hoping Tanya would be coming with her.

Thom sighed. "Very well, but both of you need to clean up the gravel, and Tanya has to promise not to keep the girls up all night on school nights."

"Promise!" Tanya added hopefully.

Thom looked at Mandy, imploringly. Mandy smiled and shrugged. "Sorry, love. With friends like ours..."

"Oh, the home teachers are going to love this." Thom muttered. "Alright, Tanya... Come on."

With a burst of hyperactivity, the little gargoyle vanished in a plume of flame, and reappeared by Anna's side, and they began talking with excitement.

After they had gone, Mandy leaned over to Christyne and whispered in her ear. "I think Anna and Tanya are going to turn out like us."

"Just no more hide-and-go-seek games in third century Arabia, and I'm fine with it." Christyne sighed.

"I'm sure after one night, Tanya will decide to come with us after all. She'll just appear back here in a few hours." Mandy laughed. Christyne sighed.

"Alright. I suspect we'll be seeing more of them later, but let's get started with what we have, shall we?" Sharm suggested, creating a large flipchart and easel out of the air. Christyne leaned back, pulled Tigris over by her and Mandy, and listened, with Tigris on her lap.

"Now that we have Tigris back -- FINALLY, we can actually start the quest I've been planning..." Sharm began, waving toward Tigris.

Mandy whispered into Tigris's ear. "There, see now? You've gotten her started."

"I'm sorry." Tigris apologized. Mandy giggled and started to straighten one of the young Tigris's plumes of blue hair, producing an ornate brush from the bag on her back.

"The first thing we need to do is find Matthew." Christyne was saying.

"Agreed." Phantom nodded. "We haven't heard anything about him for a dozen years."

"A dozen years too long for me." Sharm put in.

"How do you propose to find him?" Christyne asked. "Twelve years, he could be anywhere in the world."

"Who said anything about searching in this world?" Sharm inquired. "I know someone who's been following his movements very closely, so if we can get her to help us more directly, then I'd say finding him would be fairly simple."

"Who?" Mandy inquired, giving up on Tigris's hair. It was too wiry to do anything with, and Mandy put the brush back in her bag.

"My mother!" Christyne suddenly lit up. "She's the only one of us who isn't limited by the walls of space."

"Problem is, we've got to bring her back onto this plane if we're going to be able to ask her anything."

"Back onto this plane? You mean bring my mother back from the dead? You're crazy, Sharm!" Christyne scoffed. "You'd have to find a stone gargoyle that is still intact in the world that isn't being used once the sun is down, and THEN somehow fuse mother's spirit to the stone again. Do you have any idea how hard to find that would be?"

"Oh, dearie I have something easier in mind." Sharm noted. "Better than trying to resurrect a dead gargoyle, why not just make her a new one tailor made to fit her?"

Christyne looked at Sharm with eyes that said are-you-off-your-rocker-today-Sharm? "Make her a new body? I didn't know you were expecting, Sharm."

Sharm glowered at her. "Save that idea for later. You're the one who keeps making new eggs every five years."

Christyne glowered in response. "So you think you can do better?"

"I intend to create a physical form," Sharm began, pointing the dowel rod at her flip chart, which now displayed a large block of... something. "By taking a block of existing material, and carving a gargoyle from it." The picture changed to one of a carved gargoyle, resembling Christyne when she was asleep for the day. "And placing her inside of it, I can use my special magical technique to bring her to life."

Christyne nodded. She should have expected this much of Sharm. For a dozen years now, Sharm had been systematically using her human/fay/natural magic collision technique to do strange things. Now she planned to use the same power that was used on Tanya and all her children to combine her mother's spirit and a block of stone and reanimate her. "What special abilities would Tutela have?"

Sharm was a little baffled by this question. "If she lives again, I'll be happy."

Christyne stared at Sharm. "So... where do we start?"

"Sharm... you're crazy."

"So you've mentioned before, dearie."

"Stone I can understand, but Ivory?"

Christyne stood perched on top of a enormous block of soft Ivory. Her wings were flared slightly, as she tried to maintain balance as Sharm moved the block around with her magic.

"Show some imagination, Christine! I thought of trying to use Pearl, but it would be simply too far to go to get one large enough."

"I just want to know how on earth you got a block of IVORY this big! I mean... imagine the tusk that a block this big came from!"

"I have my ways, dearie."

"I've noticed."

"The tusk was from a creature that's been extinct for longer than I've been around, and lived on another plane of existence from us."

"Was this one of your toys that you kept in the corner of your room, and wouldn't let me see?"

"No, I kept this at Grace's place for the last year or two."

"Who?"

"Nevermind."

Flaring her wings, Christyne swept down from atop her perch, as Sharm placed the large block down on the floor in the cave she had chosen. Sharm was dressed in a filthy white apron, with a white cap on her head, and some sort of chisel and mallet in her hands. She spread her arms, showing off the outfit to Christyne.

"Look! I am picasso!"

"You failed the physical." Christyne nodded.

Sharm promptly stuck her tongue out at Christyne, threw the mallet aside, and began to whack at the ivory with the chisel in her hand. The stone block was decidedly a head taller than Christyne, but Sharm managed to reduced it in a matter of a few minutes. When Phantom appeared with Tigris inside the chamber, they watched as Sharm put the final touches on it.

Sharm was muttering to herself as she finished. "If only I could get this to work on 'Ella..."

"Eh?" Christyne muttered, but then thought better of inquiring further, turning her attention to Phantom and Tigris. They were an interesting pair -- two fay-blue gargoyles standing side by side -- Phantom the blue of his father the king of Avalon, and Tigris the blue of her mentor Cassandra. "The blues are here."

"Ah! Good!" Sharm declared. "What do you think?"

Phantom scowled. "It doesn't look like her."

Sharm scowled at him. "You weren't even born then, Arion."

"Looks to me like a gargoyle mixed with a dragon." Christyne observed. The ivory figure Sharm had just created bore Tutela's typical face -- two long slender horns jutting straight back out of her brow, with a human face, and very long ears. She had very powerful looking arms and legs, and her tail bore several spear-like projections on it. She had her typical double-wings, with a larger pair on top, and a smaller pair on bottom, but this time they seemed very dragon-like having bones down their edges. The stance and appearance of the gargoyle that Sharm had just carved in a matter of a few minutes, had an appearance that just screamed "I am a dragon!" to Christyne.

Tigris stepped up to the carved figure, looking up her length. "Spiked tail?"

"I wanted to give her one at the wedding, but she wouldn't have known what to do with it." Sharm muttered sidelong. "Besides, it would have destroyed her wedding dress."

"Now what?" Christyne inquired, hesitantly. "We have a large ivory woman."

Sharm, returning back to her normal appearance, swept up through the air in her normal fay form, and looked down at the ivory figure, and began to sprinkle things over it like small bits of herbs, oils, and smeared it in some sort of white cream.

"'Life lotion' -- another of her paradoxial creations. She sells it to her friends for use in back massages." Phantom explained offhandedly to Christyne's look of perplexing.

One of the virtues of the cave Sharm had chosen, was that it was near the surface, and some quartz veins allowed moonlight to filter down inside. As Phantom put out the lights and darkened the cave, the slender tracings of moonlight shimmered, moved, and danced all about the carved figure like they were underwater.

"For the soul to be willing

the flesh must first grow weak

just long enough

for soul in flight

to pass from cheek

to cheek." Sharm declared with a loud voice, toward the source of the moonlight.

"Like I've never heard that one before." Phantom laughed.

"HUSH!!" Sharm accosted him. Sharm withdrew a number of small items from her pouch, which she laid around the feet of the figure... an alicorn... a large red feather that glowed like a dying ember... several small silver bells...

There was a loud growl from the figure. Tigris scampered over into Christyne's arms.

"Tutela awaken!

I have called you forth!

Do as I command!

And live again!"

With that, Sharm added her own magic to the mixture. There was a loud crackle of energy, and the two mortal gargoyles clinging to each other closed their eyes.

Sharm had created another of her apocalyptic reactions.

There was a red light in the room. Christyne and Tigris opened their eyes. The light was coming from the figure's eyes. The roar grew louder. A sound of cracking ivory filled the air. Was the statue breaking? A light -- crackling almost like lightning, snapped and danced in the air.

The roar reached a climax, and all the light in the room faded.

Phantom turned the lights back on.

Christine looked down where the statue had been. Laying on the floor rubbing the sleep from her eyes was a red gargoyle, amidst a pile of ivory rubble.

"...And you doubted me!" Sharm declared.

Christyne, amazed at the sight of the new gargoyle, stepped cautiously forward with the younger gargoyle in her arms.

The red figure looked up at the two approaching gargoyles. Suddenly, a thousand different emotion flickered across the red gargoyle's face, as she recognized them.

"Christine?" asked her mother's voice. All the blood drained from Christyne's face. The voice sent chills through her... a voice she hadn't heard twenty years...

"Mother?" she asked with bewilderment.

Christine held an experimental paw out to her. She felt the other's warm paw touch her own, and Christine helped her to her feet. There was a long moment as the two, nearly equal in height, gazed at one another.

Tutela touched her daughter's face, touching the hair, the horns, the eyes... the ones she remembered from so long ago...

It was precisely at that moment that a squalling sound was heard from another cave, the sound of a baby crying. Christyne turned to go. "Oh... Carribea's crying..."

"Carribea?" Her mother's voice asked. Christyne stopped short.

There was an uneasy silence for a long moment.

Christyne broke from Tutela and hurried down the hall to tend to the youngster. Phantom followed her, a concerned expression on his face.

This left Tigris and Sharm to confront the gargoyle woman.

"What's the matter, Christyne?" Phantom touched his mate's shoulder gently. She was trembling.

"I went through her death twice. Now, seeing that face again... I'm afraid that all I'll ever be able to see was that face, a pile of smashed rubble from three hundred years ago."

"Bring the children." Phantom nodded, scooping up the tan colored heap under his feet, which had been sleeping peacefully with one talon in it's mouth.

Christyne took up the squalling youngster in the crib. She was laying across her small red wings. Christyne found the bottle on the cribside that she'd set there when she laid the youngling down for her midnight nap. Christyne sat back, gently rocking the youngster. For a moment, something flashed in Christyne's mind, of how much the squalling youngster resembled her grandmother...

"I still say it was sloppy of you. You always were careless and sloppy."

"I AM NOT! I am very careful, and I try my hardest to take care of my friends. It's not like I could do any better at the time!" Sharm added defensively.

Tutela folded her arms and turned her back on Sharm. "Sloppy and manipulative."

"Don't judge her too harshly, mother." Christyne's voice filtered into the argument. "She was saving me and we lost you."

The red gargoyle turned back to the hallway, to see her daughter standing there, with a small bundle held close to her heart. With the metal grate clanking under her talons, Christyne presented her with the small red bundle. "This is Carribea."

The red gargoyle's stern demeanor melted like water. Carefully as if it were her own, she took the small infant in her arms. "Carribea?"

"Your granddaughter. She's about fourteen months old, by human reck."

Tutela's eyes looked with wonder at the small figure. Turning, she saw the older tan colored youngster trying to sleep in Phantom's arms. "This is Corala." he said. "About three and a half as it would appear to a human."

With exasperation, Tutela looked at Christyne again. "How many more are there?"

The dragon was enormous. She filled the entire room, and the heat was scorching. Her nearly translucent skin appeared to be almost covered in jewels.

"I see Sharm has been taking inspiration." Phantom observed, comparing Tutela's new figure with that of his old friend, Xylanamalthiatibia. Tutela did not even bother with the pronunciation.

The large figure regarded the new gargoyle with open suspicion at first, but after taking in her scent, smiled. She drew up to her full height, filling the cavern. Although she was upright, she was hardly at her tallest, as her back feet were still behind her. She stood up on her front feet, peering down at the gargoyles. Tutela covered her head with her wing.

"You are the mother of this young mother?" she asked. The young mother, it seemed by her referencing motion, meant her daughter. "You have the mother's scent."

"Yes, I am Christyne's mother." Tutela answered.

"Not like the resemblance is still there." Phantom whispered to Sharm, who glowered back at him.

"The elder egg may hatch within two years.." the towering figure answered, in a softer tone than Tutela had thought was possible. "It's scent is forming - it is also a female."

"Then we will probably name her Pacifica." Christyne noted.

Phantom tugged at Tutela, urging her to follow. He continued into the next chamber, the one guarded by the dragon. Instead of stone, Tutela found herself suddenly entering a different world. Instead of sweltering heat, she found mist and steam. Although still warm as a sauna, Tutela breathed the freshness of the air shared by any of a hundred plants that thrived in this cave under bright fluorescent lights.

"Welcome to the greenhouse." Phantom smiled, taking Tutela's hand. Christyne got down on all fours, and began to bounce about on all fours, searching for something.

"I've never met a dragon before." Tutela noted, still shaking a little from the experience. "She's beautiful!"

"She resembles you a little." Phantom observed. "I think Sharm got some of her inspiration from her."

"I... I do?" Tutela asked, touching her face. Glancing into a pool of steaming water by the way side, she gasped. "I... I do!"

"Sharm took some liberties giving you life again." Christyne noted.

"I get no thanks!" Sharm protested. Tutela's paw touched Sharm's shoulder.

"I'm..." Tutela motioned to her reflection, "it's beautiful."

Sharm smiled broadly, giving a small curtsey.

Phantom had arrived at the spot, and Tutela anxiously hurried near.

"A dragon?" Tutela asked.

"To guard the eggs while we're away."

"Are you away much?" Tutela asked.

"Not usually, but it could still happen even when we are home. There are a lot of fey out there who don't like me in particular. Besides, Xylanamalthiatibia owed me a favor when she managed to step on Oberon's toe, so-to-speak. I was in the right place at the right time. Ah! See? She found it."

Carefully hidden among palm leaves, Christine had uncovered two pristine gargoyle eggs. Both were already spotted with blue circles, and the larger one swayed slightly of it's own accord.

Tutela gasped. "She was right... the larger one will hatch soon."

"Within a year or so. By 2012." Phantom estimated.

"That one will hatch late." Christyne prophesied. "It will be very near the thirteenth year before her face will be seen."

Phantom and Tutela both stared at her.

Uncomfortable at the stares she was receiving, she added. "I... I suppose she's comfortable in there!"

Tutela blinked, shrugging it off, and turned to the smaller egg. "She doesn't look too good."

"She's not." Sharm added. "She was laid out of doors on a very bad day, instead of in here. We moved the eggs in here to try and prevent the problem again, but we think something in the air made the egg ill."

Tigris, watching with quiet fascination, sat down in the fronds by this egg, with a small sigh of wonder. "She's like me."

Tutela leaned down and touched Tigris's shoulder. "Perhaps Cassandra will heal her as well?"

Sharm smiled. "I'll what I can do. Unless you mind one of your own children having blue coloring as well...?"

Christyne was still nervous. "She will be healed, but will still be born a broken little girl. Her ears will be stopped."

Phantom's brow furrowed.

"Christyne? Take a deep breath." he said.

Christyne blinked, and did so. "Was I doing it again? I can't remember..."

"Yes."

"What?" Tutela asked, glancing back and forth between them in confusion.

"Prophesying." Sharm answered. "It's been coming to you closer together now."

"Christine... prophesies?" Tutela stuttered.

"It was a gift from my mother a number of years ago. Her visions are getting increasingly frequent." Phantom explained.

Christyne blinked, and touched her brow. She sat down, dizzily. "Phantom? I don't know what's wrong, but I think I'm seeing something coming..."

Phantom nodded. "I'd say it's already started."

The snow drifted silently, settling freshly on the land. Glancing at her watch, Christyne paused to think about how late (or early, depending on how you look at it) the time had grown. The Spring Equinox was approaching, and she predicted that they would, despite the early three o'clock hour, still have a maximum of four hours to finish their task and return home. Phantom attempted to reassure her nervous feelings -- it would not take them nearly as long, he said.

Christyne felt a swelling rise. Of course Phantom was always right, and he projected his cool calm with ease. It was funny, she thought, she'd always thought that when she'd marry, she'd know exactly why she was doing it. She wasn't sure what it was about him, she only knew she loved him. Not to mention his iron-clad will was a great help at times like this...

Tutela, however, was another matter. She still teetered a little when passing a turbulent draft. When trying to bring her out into the open, Tutela had become a basket case -- she didn't remember how to glide! It had taken most of the night, but she had remembered very quickly once they had gotten her into the air. As awkward as Tutela was with her new body, she wouldn't need too long before she remembered it all again.

Christyne found herself hanging nervously by Phantom. It seemed to strange and new to have her dam watching her again. She was married now, and didn't need to be watched over! Still, there was that sensitive, human part of her that saw those eyes of Tutela that spoke of loneliness. Christyne would always looked into those eyes and curse her nervous feelings, for treating her own dam like such a stranger.

The house in Park City was there still, relieving both of them. However, something was very wrong. Christyne was the first to tack over on the breeze they were slowing down on and touch down on the lawn with a sweep of her wings. The grass was the first thing she noticed -- it was very overgrown! The house appeared older, more neglected. The paint was peeling, the walks were dirty, and the flowerbed by the gate was overgrown with weeds.

Tutela and Christyne shared an anxious glance when Tutela landed, upon seeing the condition of the house.

Things must have not gone well after Matthew's "death".

"What are we expecting to accomplish here?" Christyne said, pushing her anxiety to one side and trying to sound prepared for anything.

"Oh, he's probably still asleep. I just want to talk to him. I haven't seen him for... so long..." Tutela stumbled over the words. With a determined tread, she approached the front door, wings caped.

Christyne felt bad again. She didn't want to knock down Tutela's hopes. She had to admit she shared them, as suspicious as she was toward the whole idea.

Tutela approached the front door with the air of a giddy school girl. She was followed by two nervous gargoyles, knowing that this was an insane time of night to see a human at all.

Tutela put her paw up, as though she were ready to knock on the door. For an instant, Christyne thought she saw something flicker in a window nearby. Before even touching the door, there was a high pitched mechanical whine, and Tutela stopped. Suddenly, the door inside opened...

Tutela was utterly unprepared for the attack. There was a thud and scream as the hammer impacted with her chest and jolted her with electricity.

Enraged, the other gargoyles reacted instantly. The man behind the door tried to close the door behind him, but Christyne had already taken aim and opened fire. A fine red laser beam traced out from the device in her paws, and for a moment the porch was bathed in red light, the beam struck it's target by the door, and he fell backwards onto the floor. Groaning, he brought his weapon about, and Christyne swung aside. Phantom was also there, and took the man by the hands and disarmed him.

Christyne took a breath and relaxed a moment before pulling the hood off the man. Underneath the black hood was the older version of the man that Christyne had used to call her father, Michael Shelton. He struggled, but Phantom's grasp was too strong, and with a pass of his paw, the man fainted into his arms.

Tutela stood up, and spat with anger. "Who was he? I dare say he could have killed..."

She paused, when, with her gargoyle's night-vision she made out the man's warm face in the dark.

"Michael...?" she whispered, hopefully.

"He'll be alright." Phantom reassured her. Tutela took the man into her own arms. He certainly looked older. There were grey hairs on his head, and a few scars that hadn't been there before to her memory.

"He'll be alright."

Then Tutela noticed the insignia on his robe. "Arion? What does this mean?"

Phantom looked, already knowing what he would find. There was a triple slash insignia cutting through the outline of the State of Utah. "Hunters."

Trying to get Christyne's reaction to all this, Phantom looked around, but it was then he realized she was nowhere to be seen...

It was not the same house that had been hers in 1996, Christyne first thought.

As though in a trance, she observed the broken furniture, cluttered rooms, and smelly floors. What had happened here? Christyne had raced up the stairs, desperate to find something that looked the way it should.

Why should it? She had not been a gargoyle when last she lived here, and her eyes saw differently now. Nothing would look the same. Was it just her?

Then she heard it... the small, tender sound of weeping. Suddenly, her mind flashed... she was a little girl again, in the third room down the hall, crying on her bed for being sent to her room without supper...

...but it was not coming from her own room. Christyne's ears could tell that it was across the hall in Ket's room...

Ket! Of course, how could she have forgotten her! Christyne quickly stepped to the door, and opened it quietly. "Hello?"

"Go away!" a small voice replied.

Christyne closed the door behind her. "It's me... don't you remember?"

In the dark, Christyne saw clearly the figure curled in the corner, trying not to be seen in the dark. "Get away, monster!" The shadow tried to say in a louder voice.

There huddled a woman of nearly twenty five, with her knees pulled to her chest, crying. Christyne's jaw fell. That was not the little girl she had expected to see! She was grown up! Only, it had been nearly fourteen years since Christyne had been transformed... she had only grown seven years older in that time, but what of the rest of her family?

Something else occurred to her. Keturah had always thought her dead for a decade and a half. Neither did she know she had been changed...

Christyne turned on the light switch.

It didn't take long for Keturah to adjust to the light, and she could make out the large pink colored woman with the wings, fangs, claws, tail, horns, and pointed ears.

Keturah screamed and fainted. Alarmed, Christyne rushed forward and caught her. Within a minute, Phantom and Tutela appeared at the door of the room. "What happened? Christyne! Are you alright?"

Christyne only stared at the face on the body she was holding in her arms. She heard Tutela gasp.

Ket's face was covered in old bruises.

* * *

Phantom hated very much to see Christyne crying, because when she did so, she curled her arms around her on the table, let her wings lag beneath her, and she just lay there weeping, wilted onto the table like she were going to collapse at any moment.

Tutela stood there, over the two cots with the two humans on them. Phantom had already taken the precaution of strapping Mike down. Tutela just clung to one of the support pylon beams, leaned against it, and sighed once every few minutes as she watched them sleep.

Phantom had reassured both of them that they would not reawaken until the following evening, but for now the sun would be rising soon on the outside of the mountain. Phantom watched with trepidation as the stone form overtook Tutela and her daughter, and finally felt the stone overtake him.

However, the bundle of white tunic and red hair hovering in the background could not let it remain so. She rapped her knuckles against Phantom's stone form, and he suddenly reverted to flesh in a shudder of stone pieces. "WHAT, SHARM?" he snarled angrily.

"Don't snap at me! I told you we were going to do it tonight, so don't say I didn't warn you!"

Phantom scowled and gave in. She had told him. He'd just forgotten.

"I have something that needs to be set in order before we leave. Besides, it's your turn to go shopping."

Phantom moaned. "I spent a whole day human trying to pick out the supplies you ask for just yesterday!" he protested.

"Too bad. I went shopping last time."

Phantom sighed, and flowed into his human disguise. "Fine, but you are still responsible to watch things around here while I'm gone."

Sharm made a remove-yourself-from-my-presence motion with her hand, grinning. Phantom vanished in a sparkle of magic.

Sighing, the red haired fay looked down at the two figures on the cots. "This is not going to be fun, you two."

The brink of the precipice loomed before her. Keturah stood there, looking out with longing into the mists below her. She wondered how she had gotten here, and what lay below the cliff.

She stepped closer, and her heart began to pound. It wouldn't feel so bad. She wanted to die. Perhaps it would be thrilling to fall from a cliff so high. She looked around her on the clifftop. The land was so burned out and dry up here. She hated it here. Why should she worry, when stepping off made it so much easier?

She felt a tear touch her cheek once, as she stepped off the edge.

Suddenly the clouds and mist were gone, but Keturah was still falling.

"All of you Shelton women have the same problem, you know that?" came a new voice.

Keturah blinked. Who was that?

"Let's just say I'm a friend of your mother's. You didn't answer my last question -- did you know that?"

~Ummm... no I didn't, she thought back.

"Yes you do. Christyne had the same solution once, to try and run away from a problem. Do you know what it took to make her realize that? Three weeks in Antarctica, that's what it took. I took her and buried her in the snow for three weeks without telling her why. She didn't freeze of course because she was made of metal at the time, but she finally got it into her head that there was no easy way out in her situation, and that she had to do something about it to get any relief."

~What can I do? There's nothing I can do.

"So that's your only solution, to walk dramatically off a cliff?"

~What do you care? No one cares.

"You're right, I don't. If you want to cast yourself from a mountain top, that's your problem, but if you want to do something with the life you have, I'm perfectly willing to help!"

~Do something?

"Yes! Instead of throwing your life away, how about helping save your father's?"

~Father's?

With a wicked undercut, the dreaming Mike hoped to seriously wound or kill the ridiculous looking woman who was hovering over his head, fencing with him like she were painting her nails. Whenever Mike let up for a moment, Mike found himself laying on the ground again, and her just hanging in the air above him.

"Had enough? You know, I wasn't planning on fighting you when I came." she said, doing a flourish with her sword.

Mike started backing away, as if to make a silent escape. Before long he realized he wasn't getting any further away from her, no matter how fast he ran!

"Now I see where your daughters got it from."

"Got what?"

"Their constant tendency to run away from their problems. They learned it from you."

"That's not true!" he protested.

"Then why were you trying to kill me! (Albeit not well.)"

"You have those pointed ears like the gargoyles do, and you were flying -- I thought you were one of the enemy."

"Enemy, are we? Oh... what you don't know! How ungrateful the human race is!" Sharm laughed at the dreaming man.

"What?" he replied.

Tutela was not exactly eager to be doing this again, but she saw the need for it. The sight of him standing there almost broke her heart.

"Mike?" she asked, tentatively.

"What do you want?" he asked, his back to the bars of his rock-hewn prison cell.

"Don't you recognize me? My voice?"

"You are only a shadow of someone I once knew. She died in a car accident. You are just a gargoyle who happens to talk like her. As soon as the other hunters find me..."

"They won't find you." Phantom said conclusively.

"Am I also dead to you then, father?" Christyne put in.

Mike did not reply at first. He still remembered that night... years ago...

"Can you find me a gargoyle that sounds like Matthew too?"

"Yes. That's what this is all about." Phantom said neutrally.

"You can't seriously expect me to believe..."

"Twelve years ago you battled with their clan traveling north to Mount Saint Helens." Tutela broke in. "You killed Tigris, and because of it Matthew ran away. Now we're going to go find that boy again. You are coming with us."

"Why?"

"Because I said so." Tutela scowled. Her anger was rising, and her love and patience were fading quickly with him.

Ket was awakened from sleep by a voice... could it have been Christine's...?

"Ket... can you hear me?"

"Christine?"

"Yes, Ket. It's me."

"...but... you're dead..."

"Do I look dead?"

Ket didn't reply immediately -- confused between dreams and reality. Ket opened her eyes to Christine's face... covered in pink and a look of concern.

Ket gasped. "Ch... Chri... Christy?!!" she stammered in terror.

"It's okay, Ket. It's me." Christine replied in a soothing tone.

"You're a... a monster!"

"Perhaps, but I'm still your sister." Christine said with a defensive 'End of Discussion' tone.

"But... ... ...how?" Ket breathed.

"I'll tell you later. I want to hear about you first."

Ket looked at the face hanging over her in the moderate light, trying to decide if it was the same. She reached out a hand, and subconsciously found herself feeling the curves of that whitish pink skin.

Then Keturah's eyes slid down to the feet standing aside the bed. Sure enough, Christine had a small one-inch scar just above the ankle on her right foot -- well, fetlock anyhow.

The scar she had given Christine.

Keturah would know that scar anywhere -- she had dreamed of it so many times. Just seeing that long truck pin from Daddy's tool chest stuck up through Christine's foot and ankle... and the younger Christine screaming... Ket hardly knowing what she had done, she had been so young then... only four...

Keturah winced. It was Christine.

"It's pink." Keturah observed.

Christine blinked, and then followed her gaze to her foot, to the small dark line above her fetlock.

"Well... it was sorta permanent." Christine stammered, taken by surprise. She had forgotten about that, but Keturah had not.

"It really is you... what happened...?" Keturah barely breathed as she asked it. Christine smiled tenderly, and touched Keturah's cheek.

Keturah reached up, and the two sisters embraced -- sisters once again.

"How have you been?" Christine whispered.

Keturah sighed. "Matthew died not long after you did..." The girl looked up at Christine as though she were a ghost. "He became so angry after that. He started staying out late with these groups, and just looking at your and mother's photos. He went on trips looking for some kind of creatures, and he would never tell me about them. I started getting worried, and the doctors told me I had come down with Manic Depression. Dad got worse after I graduated from High School, so I said I'd stay home with him. He kept getting more and more obsessed with slaying his fantasy monsters..."

Keturah stopped, looking at Christine. "Go on, Ket."

"...he was so obsessed in killing... them... that he was angry most of the time. He went into angry rages when the bills came, or when he realized how badly the house was out of shape. We got into fights, and he..."

"He hit you." Christine completed the thought.

Keturah looked away, and collapsed back onto the bed. "He always said he was sorry after, and that he didn't mean to, and I stayed because I loved him... he was my father... He stopped going to church, and then he threatened to kill me too if I left, so I stayed only because I was afraid, and..."

Ket said nothing more, but only cried into the pillow. Christine leaned down and held Keturah's shoulders.

"That's easy for you to say with all your magic, but what about us?"

"Oh don't be silly! I have ways of getting there, I just need to know where I'm going first."

Tutela looked over at Phantom and humphed. Phantom scowled, scratching his temple with one talon. It surprised Tutela how gargoyle like he was. He was, without a doubt, the most gargoyle-like of any of the fay she'd met. She'd only been alive a day now, but she had never even seen a sign of any fay powers in him.

"What do you think, Phantom?"

Phantom glanced at Tutela with a thoughtful expression. "I think this is best left to you two. I'm little good at this. You and Sharm had best be the navigators on this trip. I'll stay with Tigris and the others."

Tutela nodded. He just wanted to be with Christyne, no doubt. How very much like Mike he was. Tutela had long since decided she liked Arion... well, Phantom. Very level headed, even if he had his subtle manipulations. In that wise, he was much like the fay Coyote -- subtle and businesslike fairies.

Then there was the little girl Tigris. She was less of an enigma, and reminded her distinctly of young Malcora -- the protective little hatchling that squabbled with the other hatchlings over her ledge on the castle wall at the Castle of the Drake before it was destroyed. Tigris was a budding warrior, endowed with determination and independence that Tutela almost envied. A true gargoyle.

"I assume we're bringing Ket and Mike along?" Sharm added hastily.

"Of course, I won't have it any other way." Tutela returned, sharply.

"Then they're your job, Phantom. I can't worry about them now, not if I'm going to find that boy."

Phantom sighed audibly, reserved. "Oberon still owes me." He smirked. "Besides, you're not the only one who's goaded humans before. You just find Matthew."

"I intend to." Sharm nodded, and vanished in a plethora of twinkling lights.

June 3, 2010

The camp had dispersed, and everyone was settling down. As a matter of safety, the gargoyles were gathered into a protected tent as usual, where they were settled anticipating dawn. Arion had remained in the human form he used by day, to assist Mandy in the other preparations. Tutela sat peacefully in one corner holding the already dozing Tigris (tired from the day's long flight south through Utah), and Christyne pacing pensively back and forth, waiting for her muscles to slow down.

They had made good time, and were already nearing the four-corners region that Arion, or rather Phantom (having been in his gargoyle form at the time) had indicated. They had camped in a public camping ground -- some distance away from the other humans, but still with the facilities that Mandy demanded like running water, restrooms, and hot showers. (This, Tutela had pointed out, was not camping -- it was only extended vacationing.) Their camp was along a hiking trail, within view of one of Utah's most spectacular features -- a pair of enormous sandstone arches. Many hundreds of feet high, the gargoyles had made good sport flying about them. Tigris had been simply elated at the spectacular sight of the red stone bridges so high in the air, and had begun making theories of fay like Sharm building them, despite Christyne's avid reassurances of scientific fact.

After all, Tigris argued (quite brilliantly for her young age), science reasoned up until 1996 that gargoyles are myths -- and there they stood. What good could science possibly be?

Christyne demonstrated that science was a tool used to meet an end - that was the only point she would defend. She showed Tutela the device she had bought form the Xanatos company, using a laser to cut down a tree and start the fire.

"Sit down, Christy -- you're making me nervous." Tutela insisted.

"I can't help it. Call it intuition or adrenaline that hasn't worked itself out of my system yet, but something is wrong."

"If so, we will handle it when it presents itself -- not before."

Christyne nervously sat. She glanced at her watch -- plenty of time still before the sun rose. "Why haven't we heard from Sharm?"

"A question asked of Matthew for the last number of years." Arion pointed out.

Christyne continued to twitch with anxiety, stood up and began pacing again. Tutela sighed. "Just don't wake Tigris up."

Arion and Mandy had taken up their mindset to guard the camp during the day as dawn neared. Christine had settled herself in the center of the tent to practice relaxation techniques. Mandy made a few of her typical quips on just how effective relaxation techniques could possibly be on gargoyle physiology.

An overwhelming calm settled on the camp as the final minutes arose. Now it was Arion who seemed to be nervous, as he insisted on repacking all the gear quite unnecessarily. (Tutela found the entire situation infinitely amusing.) As all was quiet except for Arion's clanging around outside the tent, the gargoyles felt that the time was at hand, stood, and took their poses to great trouble should it appear.

And the sun rose.

All at once, Arion leapt to his feet. Glancing in the tent, Tutela had turned to ivory, Tigris to stone in Tutela's arms, but Christyne stood, blinking, in her fearsome pose -- remaining flesh.

Christyne hadn't seemed to have noticed, something else enraptured her attention. Small lines of energy had begun to encircle her arms and legs -- thin, white threads of magical power that soon spread over more and more of her body.

Mandy leapt to her feet, standing beside Arion -- her face stunned. She hadn't seen such power since Avalon, over two decades ago! Christyne had tried brushing it away, but it didn't seem to be harming her -- only baffling her, as it continued to cover her body. It gave a ringing noise in the air.

Arion turned and leaned into Mandy's shoulder. "I CAN'T LOOK!"

"Arion?!!! Wha...?!!!"

"MY LOVE...!!!" Christyne cried out at the last moment before she was enveloped.

Then the magic vanished, and the gargoyle woman with it. Mandy looked on, appalled, as Arion wept into her shirt.

What followed, Christyne could only describe as a jolt, and when it hit her she screamed. It was a blood curdling sound that no gargoyle had ever before given. She was bathed in a pool of power so great that it coursed through her, electrifying her flesh so that she was certain she was being fried from the inside out.

Vague pictures flashed across her mind -- a thousand incohesive images and sensations that meant everything and nothing to her all at once. A calm summer's day turned into a violent and bloody night, turned into a dragon flying on the wind, turned into a pool of chemicals spilled across a countertop, turned into a dockworker moving crates, turned into a schoolboy teasing a classmate, turned into an animal feeding, a ball dropping, a blue cat with wings setting off nuclear explosions... on and on and on...

She tried to think, but the very attempt was met with chaos. She tried to move, but it was as though her arms, legs, wings, and tail had all been ripped from her, and that she could no more than flounder in the abyss of space.

Time passed -- how long was impossible to determine when one is writhing in this confusion and torture. Struggling beyond all hope to regain herself, Christyne's only (and what she thought to be her last) coherent thought was to scream out in agony...

"SHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRMMM!"

Christyne's flesh simmered still in her own blood as Sharm gently poured handfuls of pondwater across her bare flesh. The raindrops added to the bath, and sometimes came away from contact with her skin with a hiss, crackle, and puff of steam.

"Say something to me, Christine... it's impossible for you to be dead..."

Christyne could muster no strength -- she couldn't move. She felt like she was dying moment by moment. Miraculously however, she found her eyelids, and opened them. She found herself looking straight up into Sharm's concerned eyes. Her red hair was backdropped by evergreen trees and the early dawn sky. The expression on Sharm's face was more concerned than Christine had ever seen her. Christyne's skin burned upon her body as it slowly cooled. She was naked, but Sharm seemed concerned about not covering her as of yet until she was cool.

"Please tell me you haven't been like this for as long as I think you have..."

"Just... let me... die... here..." Christyne struggled to whisper.

"No, you'll recover Christine! Eventually you will feel much better, but you must pull through!"

"Wha... what happened?"

"Keep talking to me. You were thrown into the Realm of Chaos."

"Ch... chaos?"

"You're lucky you survived at all, it's a place where all the forces of nature itself are in collision. There is no time there, so you may as well have been in there for a thousand years now, even though it's only been a couple of days."

"I feel so sick..."

"I know."

Christyne groaned, and shifted her sprawled position in the grass to one of more comfort. Sharm leaned over her, picked her up, and slowly lowered her down into the pool. The water shocked her, how icy it was! There was a crackle of steam from the water as she was slid underneath the surface. She felt her bare skin touch the sand on the bottom -- it was cool and inviting.

"How much has your mother told you about me? Everything that she knows?"

"Yes..."

"Well, I'm going to tell you about my childhood."

Christyne could not grasp this idea for a moment. Sharm? A child?

"My mother wasn't Titania, or Maab, or any of those others. My mother was the simple friend of Titania -- a human woman who miraculously managed to amuse the immortal endlessly. Before my mother died, she charged Titania with this oath: to protect her child, me, at any cost. The year was 50 B.C. or so -- she was burned at the stake. Unlike Arion's father, the blue monstrosity, she took the oath very seriously. On my sixteenth birthday she saw how time was affecting me, and realized that someday time would kill me. She decided she had to protect me from time itself as well. She might as well have placed me on a cooking pan, tossed me in the oven, and baked me for 80 minutes like a plate of cookies. I was tortured in the Realm of Chaos at Titania's bidding for the same eternity of time without time, just like you just were. When Titania drew me out, I was a full-blooded member of the third race with as much power as Oberon and Titania ever had."

Christyne's head moved, resting above the water. "You were born human?"

"My name was Isabel Clucas. I received my name Sharm from Titania."

Suddenly, as though having just been shocked, Christyne's hands sudden clasped her face. "You mean I'm a...?!!!!"

"You're a fairy, like me."

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!" Christyne screamed in horror. Sharm immediately leapt to grab the woman before she moved -- Christyne had a habit of doing herself harm in these situations.

Reflected in the dawn's light on the pond, the flaming red head struggled to restrain the woman beneath the water, a head taller than Sharm, with similar large pointed ears, and a head of brilliant fluorescent pink hair.

"TELL ME THIS IS REVERSIBLE, SHARM!"

"Calm down, Christyne, don't work yourself up again! You have no idea what you're doing!"

"This is nightmare! My whole entire life is a nightmare! Why does this always have to happen to me? Why can't I just be who I am?!!!" Christyne wailed, bursting into tears as Sharm attempted to restrain her.

"Didn't your mother's own life get better after her trials? It's the same thing here dearie!"

Christyne continued weeping, but stopped resisting. Sharm picked her up out of the water, and felt that her skin, while still warm, was no longer hot. Wanting to immediately cover her bare skin from the day, she reminded herself she couldn't -- not yet. Instead, she made due with creating a black woolen cloak from the air, and wrapping Christyne in it like a very large doll.

Silently, Sharm sighed, watching the woman cry. Sharm cursed the one that had ordered both her changes, her transplanting, time removal, and all of it as though she were some mere mortal who wouldn't mind. Sharm knew better -- it had been HER once. Silently, Sharm cursed Oberon.

"Really, I want to try it again." Christyne replied.

"Are you sure, dearie?"

"I'm sure."

Once more, Christyne took a couple of steps before collapsing to the earth in a heap of woman and cloak and began weeping once again.

"Come on..." Sharm encouraged, helping her up again.

"I can't make it..."

"Yes you can. I can make you cover more ground than you are actually walking by using magic, but you have GOT to walk!" Sharm hefted the older woman up over her shoulder, and started forward again. "We have to make it to the castle before noon."

"Castle?"

Sharm beat on the door three times -- for luck if nothing else. "You've never traveled with me on one of my adventures, have you Chrissy? Just wait until you meet Grace! Well, I mean, as a person, not a necklace? All we need now is a magician to sell his services to the king of the castle by the sea."

"Wha...?"

"Nevermind."

The door unbolted, and creaked open. A light shown inside, as the person inside saw the two women in dark cloaks standing out in the early morning rain. The rain pounding against the drawbridge made a fearful noise that almost drowned out their words.

"Who goes there?"

"Two wet women looking for a place to sleep."

The door opened. "Of course, come in!"

"Thank you..." Christyne breathed as Sharm assisted her walking over the threshold.

Within twenty minutes they were holding mugs of herbal tea and wrapped in warm blankets. Christyne shivered slightly, and Sharm waited on her. Christyne was treated like a woman with the flu, and Sharm did not attempt to dissuade this illusion.

"I'm King Gorebash, and this is my castle." A large dragon was telling them. "You'll be our guests for while."

"I hope we won't inconvenience you too greatly."

"No problem at all. What are your names, pray tell my ladies?"

"This is the Lady Arion, and I'm her Lady-In-Waiting Isabel."

"Very well, Lady Isabel. I hope Lady Arion recovers soon."

"As do I."

"You'll be required to earn your keep here." He said, "but you guests in need are always welcome."

"Then my first task will be to arrange for a dress for my Lady." Sharm bowed. The nobleman nodded, smiled, and left.

Christyne weakly turned to Sharm, took her sleeve, and began pulling on it. "Sharm... Where are we? Are we in a different time?"

"No, the Illuminati lost my gate, remember? The year is still 2010. This is another world. Remember that big block of Ivory? I got it from another place like this one. This place is made more strongly with the third magic than ours is. It's known as a Fairy Realm, and there's lots of them. As an effect, magic is much more commonplace, but don't start testing your powers just yet! It's not normal to be this powerful even here. You could probably stand a fair fight against Oberon himself. You are NOT to even think about doing magic until I've told you exactly what to do. Your body has just gone through a very serious change, and you need to recover first."

Christine nodded, uncomfortable with the idea of her having magical powers at all, but said nothing further on that subject. "How did we get here?" she asked instead.

"I got a resonation in my magic -- you must have called my name or something while in the Void. I felt you were there, and fished you out." Sharm commented, observing tapestries on the walls.

"What happened to Phantom... And mother? Tigris?"

"They'll still be there when we get back with Matt."

"Then why bring them as far as they'd come? They might have just stayed home... Mandy wouldn't have need to have left her family! ...And mine...?"

"It won't be long, Christyne, I promise and you'll be back with them. I'd planned on doing the looking for Matthew myself, but with you here it might complicate things. Besides, it would have been hard enough to get Matt back home to our world, not to mention an entire CLAN!"

"Why call me Lady Arion?"

"We're sneaking around until we find Matthew -- Tutela says he's here somewhere. I just don't know where just yet."

Christine sniffed, and took another sip from her drink. Concerned, Sharm looked down at her, and watched Christyne wipe away another tear.

"The tears will stop once your body adjusts -- you don't need to encourage it."

"I hate you, Sharm -- how many times has this happened to me? You put me in the past in a form that wasn't even mine... Why did you have to get me involved in all this?"

"Look dearie, let's get something straight. I didn't WANT to start messing up your life -- I had no choice, even I have to obey orders sometimes."

"Orders?"

"Who do you think was responsible for sticking you in the Void in the first place? Not me certainly! Oberon put you in there and left you there -- I got you out. Oberon told me to make sure you were born a gargoyle. I couldn't mess up Terra's life like that, or yours, so that's why I took you and Terra into the past -- to make the adjustment into gargoyles a little easier. Oberon just wanted you to be a gargoyle so that you could lay a gargoyle's egg for him. You did that, he saw how well you absorbed and channeled power, so and now he wants his favored son to be wedded to another fay, not some mortal. That was why he did -- this -- to you."

"Oberon has something coming."

"I'm already working on that... not this adventure, but later. One day he's going to gather our child -- and you -- as fay to his island, and I won't let that happen. Together one day we'll give Papa Smurf what he's asking for.

Christyne sighed. "I'm sorry."

"It's alright. Are you ready to try on dresses? I need to find one that will fit you."

Christyne shifted stance a moment. "I miss my wings."

"Later, dear. Later."

"It's been a number of years since we've seen the elves in these parts -- I'm very glad to see that your kind still thrive in this area."

Christyne, dressed regally as Sharm had demanded her to appear as a noblewoman in a grey linen dress with a good deal of jewelry, merely smiled and nodded. King Gorebash stepped to one side, to allow the ladies to pass through the doorway out from the stairwell up onto the parapets.

"Magnificent!" Christyne smiled.

"I'm glad you like it, milady." said a new voice. Two other noble ladies were already standing at the edge, looking out.

"Lady Arion, this is my lady wife, and Satana. Ladies, this is our guest, Lady Arion." King Gorebash introduced.

Lady Draco was a very strong-willed looking lady, but Satana appeared to be a very pleasant lady as the two conversed.

Sharm, meanwhile, couldn't have cared less about the idle chat. The sun was setting, and Sharm was inspecting all the balustrades, searching for him...

"Milady!" Sharm suddenly blurted out. "There!"

Christyne immediately looked. There, frozen in stone with a female gargoyle in his arms, reaching out fiercely with an anger frozen in his eyes that spoke volumes, was a gargoyle with an eagle's head.

"Ah... That would be Iolair." Satana said.

"Iolair?" Christyne asked.

"The eagle. He is a very strange young gargoyle."

"Who is she?"

"Char."

"Mates?"

"No, only companions."

"He's never taken a mate -- they've never learned why." Satana observed.

"The sun will be down shortly." King Gorebash pointed out.

As they waited, Sharm leaned over and whispered into Christyne's ear. "We have GOT to do something with your hair. That color is simply atrocious, and I know you haven't noticed it, but your eyes are the same color!"

"How?

"The void, of course! Just look what it did to my hair! I used to be a brunette! We'll change it later. They'll get suspicious if we change it now."

Sunset was a magnificent display that Sharm and Christyne hadn't seen in three hundred years -- parapets of gargoyles coming to life despite their impediments of stone. Christyne felt a swelling inside her at the sight -- a reminder she missed it.

King Gorebash began to introduce "Lady Arion" to the various members of the clan of this castle, and the two asked every single one of them what they know about this gargoyle "Iolair".

The Leader-by-necessity - a black, stocky gargoyle by the name of Lysander told them how Iolair had always been known as "The Eagle", and that for many years he had been a very kind and chivalrous warrior in the rough, also being Iolair's mentor. Lex, a small nut colored female gargoyle with underarm wings was Lysander's second-in-command, told how Iolair first came to their clan -- alone from a distant land. Christyne was introduced to a mated pair who were Iolair's close friends, Demeter and Death Wing.

"He's been spending too much time with the wrong crowd." Death Wing noted.

"He was a real gentleman before the guest-clan came." Demeter added.

"Guest clan? Oh no... not one preaching about the dangers of humans to all gargoyles and how all humans should be destroyed?" Sharm inquired.

A surprised look had begun to form on Demeter's face, but another voice saved the female gargoyle the need of reply.

"Yes, to try and save these good matriarchs before it is too late for this entire clan. A worthwhile quest, wouldn't you say Malcora?"

Sharm cringed. "Oh rats. Rats rats rats rats rats..."

Christyne didn't even need to turn around. "Yes, my queen." she said. Christyne knelt down on the stones of the castle parapet, and turned to face the new voice. "I live to serve, oh mighty queen of the true gargoyles."

There was a chuckle. "Incredible. Even after all this time, the spell holds true. You may rise, Malcora."

With her fluorescent hair covering a face that was still facing downward, Christyne stood before the attractive blue gargoyle wearing skimpy and torn leathers and miscellaneous items of jewelry.

"Yes, Sharm she's under my control. You're not the only one who knows how to bury a spell." she laughed. Sharm fumed, but did not reply.

"Come, my child. I believe you already know my companions."

"Indeed I do." Christyne replied as though drugged, as three gargoyles stepped into view from behind the "Queen" -- a tan male, a bright orange beaked female, and Matthew C. Shelton in his gargoyle form, now thirteen years old.

"It's too late, Sharm."

"You can't make a person act against their will eternally, Demona! Not even I can!"

"How would you know their will, you ridiculous little fay?"

Sharm felt Christyne's hand on her vest. There was perfect clarity in Christyne's eyes -- only mourning. Matthew, standing aside the blue gargoyle, lifted his head -- his eyes were also clear.

"It was only a spell to bring me to her, Sharm -- it's been gone since Avalon." Christyne winked sidelong at her. Sharm's eyebrow quirked, and she smiled. "Play along."

"It's simple for someone as twisted as you to twist people to worshiping at your feet..." Sharm addded.

The Queen ignored this remark from Sharm, but took Christyne's hand. "Welcome back. I trust the fay didn't inconvenience you too greatly in getting free of the stone curse they placed on you?"

"It was nothing, my queen."

"Excellent. How much power do you have?"

"NO YOU DON'T!" Sharm suddenly exclaimed, and with one motion sent the gargoyles flying. Christyne's head shot around as Sharm took her arm. "DON'T EVEN TOUCH HER!"

Then, in a moment, the parapet was gone, and they were back in the waiting room in the castle -- Sharm hovering in the air without a note of pretense. "All cover is gone -- Matt knows exactly who we are."

Christyne rubbed her arm absently. "I'm so confused..."

"What were you thinking?"

"When I met her on Avalon, I told her off, but that won't happen for her for several years yet. I was under a lot of external power at the time because I was carrying Tanya. Now it's gone... and I remembered how much the Queen, Cearda, Kreiger... all of them had meant to me once..."

"To bow DOWN to them?"

"I always did. I found out about the spell she had on me when the Weird Sisters were instructing me on Avalon. I figured it was best to play along and not let Demona know that spell was broken."

"I should have watched your growing up more closely." Sharm grumbled. "I need to know just how deeply into these kill-all-humans ideas Matthew is trapped. YOU need to break out of this. Your so-called 'Queen' is nothing more than a craftsman of lies, you'll see that soon enough."

It was certainly no easy trick, but given about a half an hour and two hair pins, Mike Shelton managed to pick a lock on his cage. The moment the latch undid itself, Mike immediately looked around to see if any of the creatures had heard the noise. The one they called "Phantom" -- his ears immediately twitched, and he glanced at Mike. Mike pretended to look completely innocent. The creature decided then to face his chair in Mike's direction while he wrote in his notebook.

No matter, Mike thought, only another hour until sunrise. On her pallet, Ket moaned, and turned over in her sleep. "No... please... don't hurt me..." she muttered in her sleep, before her voice dropped below a mutter, and she was quiet again. Phantom's gaze wandered from Ket over to Mike -- where Phantom's eyebrows dropped into a scowl.

"You are a lucky man I don't kill you right now."

"So? Go ahead?"

"Christyne would not like it."

"What does she care about me?"

"You are her father?"

"I never gave rise to such demonish spawn as you."

"Look who's talking." Tigris added from the background -- revealing that she'd been listening to the conversation.

Tutela regarded Mike with visible anxiety. "I married you because I thought your eyes were open."

Mike scowled. "Terra died -- a long time ago. Don't even try that on me again -- I won't believe it."

Tigris moved along on all fours to where Mike was standing in the iron webbing of their modified tiger-cage. "What would you believe? That the president works for some secret society, and the aliens exist and are fighting a civil war, and have left guardians here on earth?"

Mike blinked -- that was stupid. "Of course not."

"Humans can be narrow minded at times." Phantom pointed out. Tutela sighed.

Mike smiled to himself. 50 minutes to go, roughly...

"Iolair!" The fire-feathered gargoyle called out across the parapets.

The eagle-headed one on the far-parapet looked up. "Cearda?"

"Her highness is holding a meeting."

Iolair and the female who's paw he'd been holding smiled at each other, broke, and Iolair spread his feathered wings, and coasted to Cearda's balustrade.

Cearda led Iolair down a set of stairs into the interior of the castle. As they turned down the central hallway, before Iolair had the chance to turn a corner after Cearda, a shadow suddenly fell on the gargoyle.

There was a momentary struggle before Iolair stopped, blinked, and looked his attacker in the eyes. "Sharm!"

"Leave me alone, Sharm. Whatever it is you want, you are not going to get it."

"What if there is nothing I want from you?"

"What are you doing here, then?"

Sharm stood up, and shifted back to her natural self. "I came to bring you something."

Iolair folded his arms. "What? I doubt there's anything you could bring me that I could want."

Sharm, annoyed at his stubborn manner, motioned down the hall behind them. Iolair gave her an odd look, but followed her direction down the hallway. Out of the darkness another fey figure stepped into Iolair's view. Her head was down, and as she came into view, she looked up at him.

The lower part of Iolair's maw dropped open.

"Chr... Chrissy?"

"Yes, Matt. It's me."

"Buh... buh... HOW?!!!"

"Sharm." Christyne pointed at Sharm.

"Actually, you would never have been 'killed' if Oberon hadn't been messing with your life -- I'd blame him."

Iolair's eyes were wide, as he struggled for the words. Lady Arion opened her arms, and Iolair suddenly found himself within them.

Sharm couldn't help but to smile without laughing this time -- there was a tear of joy in 'Lady Arion''s eye.

"You've gotten bigger."

Iolair searched for something to say. "You... you're a fairy."

Christyne sighed. "Yeah... I'm also a gargoyle -- not exactly by choice."

"Why are you here?"

"For you. We've been looking for you for a while, and Sharm finally had an idea where to look for you."

"How did you find me?"

"Tigris is alive." Christyne informed him.

Iolair's eyes widened again. "T... Tigris?"

"Cassandra saved her from her gunshot wound, just like she saved you from the fall -- but you'd already run off."

Iolair's eyes fell to the floor. "I... I can't go back. Not now."

"Why?" Sharm protested.

Iolair was silent for a long moment. Footsteps echoed down the hallway.

"You have to go -- NOW! Leave here! Go home!" Iolair told them, shunting them down the hallway away from the approaching footsteps.

Sharm and Christyne ducked into a room down the hall, out of sight. Iolair turned, just as out of the dark hall, two gargoyles appeared.

"We were wondering where you had gone."

"Lost your way, Iolair?"

"Just thinking."

"Demona's looking for you."

"Lead on."

With that, Cearda and Char turned to lead him down the hallway they had come from only moments before.

Meanwhile, hidden in a doorway, 'Lady Arion' looked at Sharm. "Okay, now what?"

"I can't help you with this. I can keep spells off you, but I can't control anyone's actions. Remember what I've taught you, now." Sharm encouraged.

Gathering herself in several deep breaths, 'Lady Arion' entered the conference room.

There, the gargoyles were standing around a fireplace -- talking, apparently. "You called for me, Demona?"

"Ah, Malcora!" Demona said in her saucy way. Hands on her hips, Demona regarded the smaller elven thing that stood before her. "We believe we may have an incantation to make you yourself again. Would you like that?"

"I make no mystery of the fact that this was all against my will. However, you need to understand that I've been human since we last fought wing to wing."

"Do you... sympathize with these... humans?"

"Some, but not all."

"Spoken honestly."

There was silence between them for a moment. The other gargoyles were silent, listening with well-attuned ears. "You abandoned me."

"Did I?" Demona retorted.

"You allowed the human to take me. I depended on you. Did you not tell me we would die together?"

"You did not die."

"You did not know that -- it changes nothing. You abandoned my entire CLAN to mercy of the humans."

"They refused to follow us."

"Some of them sympathized with you -- because of you, the gargoyles of Earth began to perish!"

"Lies!"

"Because of you, the hunter began destroying all of the Scottish gargoyles -- even let the Isle of Man gargoyles -- many of which agreed with you, you let them all be destroyed! You even hunted down the descendants of Tutela yourself!"

Demona hissed at her.

"Iolair!" she commanded. The eagle-headed gargoyle stood forward from Demona's companions.

"My queen?"

"She will not help us -- kill her."

"How typically human of you, Demona." Christyne scowled.

"I cannot." Matthew replied.

Demona turned to face him. "Why not?"

"May I remind you that our presence among the fairy realms is through the grace of the fey? To endanger that treatise..."

"This one is a traitor to them -- they would thank us to deal with her."

"I beg to differ." Sharm's voice came from behind 'Lady Arion'. "She is among the most favored of the humans of King Oberon's court."

"The consort of his favorite son!" Demona spat the first words out tersely. "Nothing more than a low level animal that his son has found himself infatuated with!"

Christyne's face was red -- her gaze trailed to the floor again.

Suddenly, throughout the chamber, a commotion spread like wave from the fireplace to where they stood. The crowd parted another group of gargoyles came forward -- pushing the others briskly out of the way. "DEMONA! You traitor!"

Demona seemed to be getting a headache, as she touched her brow with one paw, and turned to face the other. There, resplendent in green velvet, a darker blue gargoyle woman stood facing up to Demona with a fierce expression.

"Jade..." Demona acknowledged her.

"I hear that you've been going around demanding executions again! I thought I had your word? Now what are you going to tell me? That you were only testing me this time? I don't buy it!"

"Oh, stop prattering Jade..."

"Prattering, am I? Trust me, if you want prattering, I can give you that too."

"Seems to me that you are busy. I shall attend thee at a later date." Christyne bowed, going back into her 'Lady Arion' act.

She moved to withdraw, but Iolair's paw came to rest on her shoulder.

"I though I told you to leave?" he whispered.

"We came for you." she replied, turning to face him. Almost without helping it, she touched the sides of his avian face. "We told Tigris we wouldn't come back without you."

"Then you told her foolishly." Demona cut in.

"Tigris is dead, is she not? Can your powerful friends bring old friends back from the dead?" Cearda muttered in Iolair's ear.

If Christyne had still been in Gargoyle form, she would have hissed at Cearda. Iolair placed a paw on Christyne's should, restraining her. "Tigris is dead. She died in my arms."

"Haven't you ever told them?" Sharm asked.

Iolair paused. "It was... never important."

"Not important that you were human once too? My brother by blood and sire, not only rookery?"

Demona's gaze flickered from Christyne to Iolair.

Jade burst out laughing. "They argue amongst themselves! They cannot even decide if they are even gargoyles! A contemptible lot of them, if I ever saw any."

Demona was furious. With one of her toes, she drew a line in the dirt on the castle floor. She motioned to Iolair. "What are you?" She motioned to her side of the line. "Warrior?" Demona motioned to Christyne and Sharm's side of the line. "Or Woman?" The word was laced full of disgust as Demona said it.

Iolair stepped onto Demona's side of the line -- refusing to meet Sharm's shocked gaze.

"Hmmmm... even so." Jade commented. "I still think you wouldn't know the gargoyle way if it came and hit you in the head."

"What do you recommend, then?"

"Do it the way the gargoyles have always done it -- each side choose a contestant. If yours wins, Demona -- then Iolair has won his warriorship yet again, and I'll stop 'pestering' you. If your champion fails, however, he is not a gargoyle at all, you have been keeping the company of a human, and you and your followers will leave here because of your hypocrisy." Jade folded her wings, decisively.

Demona was visibly trapped -- she couldn't refuse. Jade grinned -- she knew all to well that Demona would rather die than refuse her challenge.

"Very well, Iolair shall be my champion -- he is my best, after all."

Iolair bowed. "My pleasure."

Jade looked at Sharm with indifference. "And you?"

"I move you fight for us, Jade." Christyne spoke up.

Jade's self-assured smile grew larger. "With pleasure."

The beat of the drum was quick. The courtyard was filled with humans and gargoyles alike, as well as and the duo of fay sisters. Iolair bore Cearda's sacred halberd, while Jade was prepared to meet him with nothing more than a quarter staff. Jade smiled, and they faced off. The drum rolled, and was quiet.

Iolair spun on one foot, wings spread, gave a wicked undercut with the head of the halberd. In order to avoid having both her legs hit, Jade jumped backwards. However, she didn't loose her advantage, she jumped into the fray with the end of her quarter staff driven toward the eagle-headed gargoyle's eagle head. He parried, and their staffs were locked together. Jade had superior strength, but Matthew appeared to have a great deal of cunning. While struggling over the staffs, Iolair just about pulled Jade off her feet with a swipe of his tail.

The humans cheered for Jade, and the majority of the gargoyles cheered Iolair on. Sharm and 'Lady Arion' remained on the sidelines, watching, but not saying anything, along with their opposers, Demona and Cearda.

"Where did he learn the skill?" Sharm inquired of Cearda.

"You see that one over there -- Lady Lysander? She was the greatest of the warriors of this castle's clan before we joined them. Iolair chose her as a mentor when he was still very young, and he was already very well trained by the time he was expelled."

"Expelled?" Christyne inquired.

"Iolair killed one of the humans -- payment for a wrong the human did him. That is, after all, the gargoyle way."

"The clan threw him out?"

"No, more like he left of his own choice. The humans were planning on murdering the clan in their sleep. Iolair had joined my clan, and we warned them before the humans could get to them. Then we came here, and I suspect these humans wanting to do the same." Cearda explained.

"The humans must die." Demona added. "That is the only way to draw the line."

"This clan accepted him again?"

"They had no choice -- he was of my clan now, and we saved their lives. If they didn't accept us, they would be ungrateful to their saviors." Demona smiled to herself.

"Tell me of this clan, Cearda." Sharm inquired after a rising cheer from the crowd had quieted. "They are mostly of Scottish stock. Why don't they return to their homelands?"

Demona scowled. "The hunter would hunt them down and destroy them in their sleep. It is safer for them fighting for their existence here."

"Our British brethren have already been destroyed. Rushen's uprising was a good example of this." Cearda pointed out.

Iolair had grabbed Jade from behind, and had her in a hold. Jade twisted about a few ways trying to break his hold.

"Iolair? What does the name mean?" Sharm inquired.

"The Gaelic name for the eagle." Cearda explained.

Jade back elbowed Iolair in the face, and he stumbled. Taking her advantage, she twisted, brought her quarter staff to bear, and brought it across his head.

The crowd was suddenly alive. Iolair tried to take a swipe from Jade's middle, but she had already taken his grip. Iolair broke her grip and slung her over his head. In the execution of this move, Jade had already prepared her next one -- upon hitting the ground, she twirled, and Iolair -- still woozy from the hit to his head, didn't realize it until it was too late. Jade's tail took his feet from under him, and Jade was able to tackle him and wrestle him to the ground.

"The game is played." 'Lady Arion' announced.

Jade smiled, and helped Iolair to his feet. Iolair bowed.

The drummer trilled.

"Demona and her clan have lost." Jade announced.

"You wish to break our treatise?" Cearda inquired.

"We are grateful for your saving us, but we do believe the gargoyle way to give in to such works of darkness and secret murder as you practice." Jade bit back at her.

Demona scowled, rising to her feet. She hissed at Iolair, and spat at his feet, before scaling the walls. Cearda placed a paw on Iolair's shoulder -- the look they exchanged was unreadable. Char followed, but Iolair looked bitterly away from her.

"She will learn -- in time. We all will." Cearda observed. "I'll see to that. Fare thee well, Iolair."

Iolair nodded, defeated.

Jade crowed -- her clan echoed her. The small nut colored leader-by-necessity stood to address the clan. Sharm led Christyne and Iolair away from the courtyard.

"She no longer has hold on you, and she's rejected Matthew." Sharm explained to Christyne.

Christyne sighed. "It's hard to give up any companion."

"Friends are always that way. Malcora was a very different person than you."

"Perhaps... but I understand how Demona feels."

Iolair still appeared defeated in spirit, he was seated on the balustrade with his head hanging. Sharm moved to speak to him, but Christyne held her back.

"Leave him be for a while." Christyne advised Sharm.

However, they were saved the need. The dark colored Lady Lysander, dressed in a japanese Gi, approached him. Neither of the fay girls heard their conversation. Lady Lysander gave him purple belt to wear with his version of her oriental robe.

"She's promoting him in battle skills." Christyne observed.

Sharm shrugged. "Whatever helps him, I guess."

When finished, Lady Lysander went to rejoin her clanmates.

"They'll be making him leave again." A new voice told Christyne and Sharm. They turned to find Satana watching the entire exchange. "It's time you go home."

"It's about time." Sharm shrugged. With a motion of one hand, she created a portal of light in the air in front of her.

Iolair turned to face them. Christyne took him in her arms. "Let's go home."

Sadly, he nodded.

"TRAAAAAIIIITOR!" Came Demona's screaming battle cry. Looking skyward, out of the darkness, her clan was diving in to attack!

"Go!" Sharm exclaimed, thrusting brother and sister through the portal -- and diving through after them.

Before the rise of dawn, Phantom sighed and stopped writing. "Time to sleep, Tutela."

"I can still feel it when it is near. I haven't lost that feeling in all these years." She commented.

Phantom shifted to his native form of Prince Arion. The sun peaked just above the horizon, and Tutela turned to stone.

There was a commotion behind Phantom, as he turned to find Mike making a mad dash from his open cage door to where Keturah slept. From the camping-kitchen table, he retrieved a meat clever, and raised it over Keturah.

"NO!" Phantom shouted. Before Mike could bring the knife down, his hands were stopped by a figure hovering in mid-air. "What are you doing?!!! Are you mad?!!! She's your daughter!!!"

"She's sided with the enemy! You have poisoned her mind!"

"You poisoned her mind, we're trying to help her heal! Would you slay your own daughter and grandchildren?"

Mike spat. "Grandchildren? Those demon-spawned devils? Keturah is my daughter, but in war there must be casualties!"

"You are mad..." Phantom breathed -- astonished.

Mike twisted the knife in his grip. The blade slashed across Phantom's wrist, but it glanced off as though it were made of plastic. He raised the knife again to hurt Keturah, but Arion's fist connected with his face. Mike dropped the knife, teetered, and feel onto the ground unconscious.

Arion rubbed in knuckles. "Instead of a cage, perhaps we should use chains -- or a straight jacket." Of course, no one heard him say this.

After making sure Keturah was sleeping soundly, Arion flew over the sandy landscape and shrubbery to the great arches. He came to rest between the two grand arches in the park, and checked his watch.

The sun set. Tutela broke from her stone form, spraying shards of Ivory in all direction. She regarded Mike with an intrigued look -- handcuffed to a Joshua tree.

"Have some trouble?"

"Nothing I couldn't handle. Five, four, three..."

Right on time, one of the two arches suddenly came alive -- the space between the rocks had suddenly filled with magic and light.

Christyne -- transformed into a fluorescent pink-hair fay stepped through, bringing along the now full grown gargoyle who had been Matthew C. Shelton -- her brother.

"My love!" Arion exclaimed, and rushed over to meet her.

She held up a hand. "Watch out!"

Sharm followed her through the portal, when suddenly there was a scream. Demona and her clan appeared, flying out of the portal. "Get Ket! They mean to kill us!"

Fast as lightning, Arion was by Keturah's bedside, and picked the girl up in his arms. Keturah snapped into wakefulness.

"Whu... What's going on?"

"We're under attack." Arion said quickly.

Char dived down from the air, foot first with a short sword in hand. Arion jumped into the air with Keturah in hand. Char adjusted her dive to follow him.

"Stay up here -- I'll protect you." Arion instructed her, depositing her atop the great stone arch. Turning to face Char, he drew from thin air itself a large steel broadsword. "Face me, if you dare!"

Demona just wanted Christyne. Mace in hand, she dived for her. Christyne saw her husband flying with Keturah, and suddenly felt a rush to go to him. Not seeing Demona, she involuntarily leapt into the air -- and let herself fly.

Demona screamed with consternation as Christyne jumped into the air. Changing her dive, she landed on the rockface, and then launched herself into the air again. This time Christyne heard the scream, and turned to face her.

Char beat against Arion's sword, and threw it from his hands. "It was too obnoxious anyway." He muttered, and shifted back to Phantom. Char threw her short sword off the side, and met him paw-to-paw.

They struggled atop the stone arch. Phantom gave footing, and the backed into Keturah. Char back elbowed her in the face. The blow left Keturah without her balance, and she felt herself beginning to slip on the sandy surface of the stone arch. She flailed her legs, looking for solid ground, but it gave way and found herself tumbling through space...

Keturah's scream turned Christyne for the heat of her anger, toward the skies. "KET!" Christyne shouted in horror. Dear Ket! If only you could fly! "Fly!" she commanded.

The dark shape of Christyne's queen, with eyes ablaze, came rapidly swirling down upon her with mace in paw. Christyne suddenly realized that her good sword -- the one Arion had given her -- had been burned away in the Realm of Chaos. She wished she had it again. She began to feel a tingling in her hands and a rush of energy like the night she had defeated Obscurmalo -- all at once she had her wings again -- she was a gargoyle again! She had her sword in her hand!

"Your magic cannot save you, Malcora!" Her opponent exclaimed, and their weapons collided. Christyne's eyes glowed, and her wings found a draft -- a draft that seemed to move her wherever she wished to go as she battled the wicked blue one.

"You've grown weak, Malcora. Motherhood was never kind to humans."

"You have a child too, born the same way as each of mine."

The queen snarled, and they twisted about in each other's grip.

"I loved you once! You meant everything to me!"

"An example had to be made!" Demona replied.

"I was your most loyal, and you betrayed me!"

"You disobeyed me! You were in love with a human! Just like your evil father!"

"Not all humans are evil -- and not all Gargoyles are protectors!"

To this, she snarled. "Now time to die!"

Christyne parried around and pinned her weapon as they set foot atop the arch. "You forget. You abandoned me to the fay -- they made me an immortal."

The other loosened and banished her mace. "You allowed yourself to be wooed by one... and now you are more vulnerable to iron."

Christyne's eyes widened -- she was right! She was a fay -- Fay were killed with iron! Distracted, Christyne was hurled to the ground, as her opponent took a scrape out of her cheek with her mace. the wound healed instantly, and the blood on the mace vanished.

Christyne made to escape, but the queen held her down. The queen raised her mace, ready to obliterate Christyne's head into the rock...

The falcon's cry filled the air. The queen looked away, and was suddenly hit upside the head by a figure diving at her, on the wing. Christyne rolled over and escaped, took the queen's legs, and tackled her to the ground -- removing her of her mace. The queen snarled, broke from Christyne's grasp, and fled away into the night, screaming as she went.

Her fellows saw her leave, and bounded to follow. Char was a little slow -- Phantom was too busy throwing her off the arch for a few moments before Char had the chance to follow on the wing.

Christyne saw the figure that had screamed like a falcon and hit the queen, descending toward the camp below. It was humanoid, but had a falcon's wings. She watched as Christyne followed her and landed beside her.

"KET! You're alright, thank God!" Christyne exclaimed. "Yuh... You have wings!"

Ket ran a hand through her hair -- which had all changed to ebony feathers, forming a plume along her head and neck. "Feathers too... and I can scream like a falcon."

"How?!!!" Christyne asked, looking at Sharm.

"Wasn't me!" Sharm shrugged. Phantom said the same.

Then Christyne realized it -- she had wanted Ket to fly. She blanched... remembering her unleashed fay powers. "Oh my... I think I did it... oh dear I'm sorry..."

Ket looked at the ground. "Well I sorta... like it... I mean -- it's better than being a dark smear on the mountain path! Thank you, sis..."

Christyne stood for a minute... baffled. Ket had been the most human of her entire family... she always wanted to have wings?

Christyne, surprised, embraced her sister.

"GRRRRRAHHH! NOOOO!" Mike shouted, pulling against Phantom's magical handcuffs, embedded in the Joshua tree. "Freaks! All of you are freaks and monsters!" Mike began to bite at the handcuffs, as if her could tear them free with his jaw.

The clan glided down the hillside to the area where Mike was chained. "He'll never relent. Hatred has torn his mind." Phantom reported. "He tried to kill Keturah during her sleep, babbling about casualties of war."

Keturah was visibly disturbed by this. Christyne turned to Tutela. "Mother?"

"If I were a human, I'd have him confined to a mental institution." Tutela sighed, regretfully.

"A gargoyle would have killed him long ago." Christyne observed. "But father...?" Christyne touched her father's brow. "I know how it feels to have so many... inner demons." Christyne closed her eyes, concentrating. Sharm's eyes widened with concern.

Mike became limp, and fell asleep. Phantom motioned and the handcuffs vanished. Christyne took her father's limp form in her arms, and laid him down at the base of the tree.

"Time... it's the best healer I know."

"Come... let's take up camp and go from this place." Tutela agreed, motioning.

"Chrissy..." Ket stuttered, looking behind them at the arch. The portal had long since vanished after Demona's clan had come through from the fairy world, but Keturah was looking at the eagle-headed figure gliding down the mountain side after them. "Is that...?"

"It's Matthew."

Keturah's face broke, and she ran forward. "Matt!"

"Ket!" Iolair exclaimed, arms wide. The two met in an embrace. "It's so good to see you!"

Walking back to camp, Christyne told them to be sure Matt didn't forget Mother. Tutela eyes watered with tears. "My son! My son!" she cried.

"Okay, okay, enough already! Sugar, sugar, sugar -- Ack! I'm gonna be sick!" Sharm began babbling excitedly. "Come on! Let's go HOME already! I've got first dibs on the shower! Iiiiiiit's a small world, Aaaaaaaaaafter all!"

Christyne new better than to inquire about Sharm's sudden interest in hygiene, and helped packing up camp. Christyne talked with Tutela about making plans to pick up her daughter from Mandy's house.

"Where is Mandy, anyway?" Tutela asked.

"She went home yesterday -- morning sickness. You were Ivory at the time, Tutela." Phantom explained. Christyne laughed.

Iolair followed Christyne, and tried to help with the chore. He seemed out of place, but did his best. Arranging a pile of boxes and cartons, his hands suddenly met with another reaching for the same bottle of milk.

A blue paw.

Iolair looked up. Tigris looked up at him.

"Yuh... you're alive!" he exclaimed, helping her to a standing position.

"In the flesh, monchere." she smiled, laughing at an old joke.

Iolair blinked a few moments, before he remembered the inside joke. "It's been so long!" In each other's arms, lips met.

Epilogue

Dawn broke, and Mike found himself looking about himself at Arches National Park, laying underneath a tree. He wondered how he'd come to be there. It had something to do with gargoyles, he was certain of that -- he'd been hunting them. How had he gotten here? He looked about him, expecting to see them. He found nothing but an abandoned campsite in the shadow of the arches.

After walking a few miles, he made it to a park diner, and ordered himself breakfast.

"Have ye heard, matey?" said the bartender.

"Heard?"

"Gargoyles! In New York! Live ones, man!" the man rambled, as he worked behind the counter preparing various meals, and wiping his brow on the towel slung over his shoulder. "They finally proved they exist! They attacked this church back in '96 ye know...?"

"Some of us always knew."

"Amazing! Just amazing! We always thought we were the only ones on the earth who could think, and talk, and the likes. No sir! They had it right here -- they proved they are not only smart, but they've been hiding all this time."

Mike sighed, stirring his coffee. 'So', he thought. 'It's finally happened.'

The bartender looked at him -- expecting a reply.

Mike regarded the man, and turned back to his coffee. "Perhaps... perhaps it should have stayed that way."

Fly, fly little wing
Fly beyond imagining
The softest cloud, the whitest dove
Upon the wind of heaven's love
Past the planets and the stars
Leave this lonely world of ours
Escape the sorrow and the pain
And fly again

Fly, fly precious one
Your endless journey has begun
Take your gentle happiness
Far too beautiful for this
Cross over to the other shore
There is peace all one word
But hold this mem'ry bittersweet
Until we meet

Fly, fly do not fear
Don't waste a breath, don't shed a tear
Your heart is pure, your soul is free
Be on your way, don't wait for me
Above the universe you'll climb
On beyond the hands of time
The moon will rise, the sun will set
But I won't forget

Fly, fly little wing
Fly where only angels sing
Fly away, the time is right
Go now, find the light

"Fly", Celene Dion