Author's Note: I'm back! Sorry for the delay; I was having a bit of writer's block on the beginning of Part 3, but in the end I just made myself sit down and write it and hope for the best. In the meantime, I was nervously watching the end of Season 7, hoping the show wouldn't pull the rug out from under me, making my story completely AU. Fortunately, it didn't, for the most part. But I will have to ignore the events of the finale, assuming what happened at the end is a permanent change (which I kind of doubt). This story has already been planned out to the end, and it's too late to try to incorporate the twists of the S7 finale.

So, Part 3: Once again, Mark is borrowed from "The Trials of Being Twice Blessed" by the kind permission of Bluley. You can find "Trials" on this site (check my favorites) and I encourage you to go read it; it's great. (But aside from the borrowed character, our stories are not related at all, including when it comes to Mark. I've tried to keep his personality intact, but his life story is quite different.) Also thanks to: Meri and Maria for the usual incredibly helpful character and plotting discussions that helped me get "unstuck" in puzzling out the details of Part 3; and Crossbow, who is working her way through beta-reading earlier chapters. Finally, thanks again to reviewers old and new — your feedback is always appreciated! And now …

Part Three: Cut Adrift

Chapter One

There would be days in the future, times when Mark would wonder if he had tried harder, if things might have been better. If he had stood his ground, he might not have lost his friend.

He would watch Wyatt from afar in years to come, watch his former friend's power grow, while the family that had once surrounded him disappeared: the Charmed Ones dead, Wyatt's father — well, Mark would never hear of his whereabouts — and Chris's break with his brother would be public knowledge in magical circles.

Mark would see all this, and think that had he been given the chance, he would not have turned away. He would have stuck by Wyatt, and he could have been a weight to slow the downward spiral. He could have been the listening presence who knew the darkness but knew you didn't have to walk into it. That's what he was when they were friends. That's what he could have been, if that day had not gone so bewilderingly wrong.

Everyone else that day had been angry. But not Mark. He had just wanted whatever Wyatt wanted.

But maybe he should have been angry, Mark would sometimes think. Would that have helped?

But such thoughts lay in the distant future. On the day in question, the sixteen-year-old half-Manticore couldn't imagine the future's chaos. On that day, he only thought about how he had inexplicably enraged his friend. He wanted to apologize, if he could figure out where he had gone wrong.

And so, on that spring afternoon, Mark found himself where he had never been: on the street outside Wyatt's house. "The Manor" the Halliwells called it. Imposing, it sat atop a hill, and sitting on one of the stairs leading up to it was the younger brother. Mark had seen Chris once, that day months before in the Underworld, but they had never spoken.

Strangely, Chris was speaking to a demon. They both turned their eyes to Mark as he approached, the demon squinting in concentration. After a few words were exchanged between the two, the demon shimmered away, and Chris rose to walk down the stairs toward Mark, who tentatively took steps up to meet him.

Chris's stare was morose. "You're looking for Wyatt."

"Yeah."

"He's not here. He took off after he got expelled from school."

"Expelled?" That news was hardly surprising, considering what had happened that day, but it nevertheless caught Mark off guard. Then he began to ask, "Can you tell him …"

Chris interrupted. "He said he didn't have any demon friends. Wyatt said that, today. I don't think you're welcome here."

Mark believed him. Chris only confirmed what he already knew. "Okay. I get the message. You can tell him that, I guess."

Defeated, Mark returned to the street below. Before ducking behind a van to shimmer home, he glanced back to see Chris enter the Manor, shutting the door behind him.

Twelve hours earlier …

The hallway was brightly lit, but silent, not yet full of the day's bustle. Paige had orbed herself and her sisters in before the start of business. Phoebe moved rapidly to a door, gently twisted the knob and peered in.

"Piper! Piper!" she hissed. "They're both in there."

She moved aside and briskly gestured to her older sister, who had already moved forward. Opening the door wider, Piper froze the room's occupants with a snap of her hands before the three walked in.

In the motionless tableau, a well-groomed, smartly suited young man stood over a long table spread with tagged art and antiques that he had been logging on an electronic pad. Behind him, a menacing figure loomed over the unsuspecting worker. Piper took stock of the demon and then blew him up. One problem solved.

Phoebe set herself to solving the other.

"Do you see it?" Paige asked as her sister moved along the table, scanning the items.

Phoebe picked up a small but weighty metal object — half of a sphere, with notches that she guessed interlocked with a missing half. "Yep, this is what I saw in my premonition. It's kind of pretty, with the designs on it. What were they trying to sell it as? A paperweight?"

"Buckland's," Piper scoffed as they moved to the door to leave. "Of all the companies in San Francisco, you think they'd know not to traffic in demonic artifacts." In the empty hallway again, she leaned in and added, "For God's sake, people, put it in the employee handbook!"

With a careless flick of her hand, she unfroze the auction house employee before Paige orbed them back to the Manor, where the orange light of sunrise was beginning to glow through the windows.

Once there, Phoebe went up to the attic to get the Book of Shadows, which she found already in use: Her nephew Chris was standing over it, still clad in his pajamas, and talking on the phone.

"I think something like this could work." He began copying something on a notepad, and added after a pause, "Yeah, I know. But now if we do find him, we could actually have a plan for what to do about it." He looked up and saw Phoebe waiting, arms crossed. "Hey, my aunt's here. I gotta go. See you at school."

"What are you doing?" Phoebe asked after he hung up.

Chris waved the sheet he tore off the notepad. "I remembered seeing this spell once — making the invisible visible. I got the idea when I woke up this morning that maybe we could tweak it or something, so that if we find Alaric, we could say it to force him to return Vincenta's power."

"And who is this 'we'?" she teased.

"Whoever finds him, I guess. Don't worry, I won't be hunting him down."

"That's good to know, because if nothing else, your mom would kill you, and I like my nephews alive, you know? Now, if it's okay with you, we kind of need that book."

"Be my guest," he said with a laugh.

Within an hour, the Manor was alive with the chaos of the boys getting ready for school. Arguments with their mother and with each other — mostly good-natured — created a babble of noise to which Phoebe added as she talked to her own daughter on the phone.

Paige had found in the Book of Shadows the object they had recovered at Buckland Auction House. It was indeed one of a pair, and the demon who had tried to take it that morning had likely been a member of the Cult of Dalzior — Dalzior being their powerful, long-vanquished master. "The object can't be destroyed," Paige had read aloud, "but if the two pieces are brought together, it can be used to resurrect Dalzior."

Now, amid the morning bustle, she used one half to scry for the other and soon hit upon an unexpected location.

"Golden Gate Park?" Phoebe, now off the phone, looked over her sister's shoulder at the map.

"Oh, I think I get it," Paige said. "The demonic market, remember? It's on some kind of other plane, but the park is more or less where it is."

"It won't be easy to get in there."

"Try impossible," Piper said. "We're too well-known; there's no way we could pass ourselves off as demons. Look, it seems our best move right now is to get the half we have as far away from here as possible, then we'll worry about getting our hands on the other half. It won't work by itself anyway."

"Maybe Leo can orb it to a volcano or something?" Phoebe suggested.

"He's gone again — the Elders have saddled him with some other Whitelighter's charges, and it's kept him even more busy than usual."

Paige looked on the verge of volunteering for the volcano job, when Phoebe perked at the sight of her older nephew listening at the door. "Wyatt!"

"Phoebe —" Piper warned.

"Come on, it's a harmless errand, and there's time before school starts." Piper had scarcely relented when Phoebe handed the object to Wyatt. "How does a trip to a volcano sound?"

"Hot," he replied, inspecting the artifact. "But sure, I can do it."

Just then, a short, dilapidated demon — regrettably familiar to them — shimmered in the room, threw up his hands and yelped, "Don't blow me up! I'm here to help!"

Piper refrained — for now — from blowing Penka up, but raised a caustic eyebrow. "People who come to help are usually polite enough to use the door."

"Do you want me to do that? I can —"

"No, it's too late. What do you want?"

"Like I said, to help. I have information."

"Why don't you go to Merlin?" Phoebe asked. "Aren't you two in league or something?"

"In league? No. Really, I'm just never sure what he actually tells you. And if I'm giving information, I should at least get to be on your good side. Plus, Merlin's sometimes hard to get hold of. Even if I could get into Magic School, I'm sort of afraid to go there. That Elder, Gideon is it?" Penka gave an exaggerated shudder and then addressed Wyatt directly: "He's just creepy. You know what I mean?"

"He's got a point there," Wyatt said.

By this time, the scene had drawn Chris to the room as well, and Penka said cheerfully: "Hey, hi, kid!"

"Uh, hi …"

"Stop talking to my children," Piper said, coldly enunciating each word, and Penka snapped his attention back to her. "What are you here to tell us?" she asked.

"Okay, well, understand — I hear rumors all the time, demons' thoughts about this or that wicked plan. So much bluster, you have no idea. Anyway, this is different. There are these widespread rumors about one demon who's determined to do one thing: get her hands on Excalibur. She's supposedly called the Fortalice."

"Aha!" Paige exclaimed. "I know that one. I found her in a book at Magic School. Is she here in town?"

"I don't think so. Not yet. The rumblings are more that she may be coming here, or even that she's just waking up or reviving after being dormant for centuries, just like the sword. Now she's coming back to make a play for it again."

Paige explained, "The description said Excalibur is the only thing that can kill her. And what better way to avoid being killed by Excalibur …"

"… than to be the one controlling it, yeah," Penka finished.

"Why should we believe you?" Piper asked. "I don't get why you're telling us this. What's in it for you?"

"I admit, I'm thinking of what's best for me. But unlike other demons, I take the long view of what's best for me. I mean, sure, the sword getting into the hands of evil sounds great and all, but then I start to think about it: Do I really want an invincible tyrant ruling everyone with an iron fist? Or sword, whatever. Then I start to worry about it constantly. I don't want to be noticed, I don't want to be someone's minion, I just want —"

"To be evil on your own terms?" Piper chirped.

"Exactly! Um … I mean, yeah?"

Piper sighed. "Is there anything else? Is that all you know?"

"That's it. I told you, it's just rumors. But a lot of rumors."

"Great. That's all we ever seem to get. In the meantime, we've already got one magical problem to deal with today, so …"

"You want me to leave?"

"Yes."

After Penka shimmered out, Wyatt spoke up: "I don't know why we care about Excalibur. I don't. It's not like I need it."

Part of Piper wanted to agree — the sword was just one more magical complication in an already over-complicated life. No one knew exactly what it meant for Wyatt to be its heir, and if Wyatt didn't feel a great attachment to the thing, if Wyatt didn't believe he needed it … why undergo the hassle of trying to keep it safe for him until he was old enough to take possession?

Unfortunately — or fortunately, Piper grudgingly admitted — her sisters were ready to remind them of why they had to care.

"Whether you need it or not," Phoebe said, "it's part of your destiny, Wyatt."

"More importantly, it's not part of the destiny of this Fortalice, or anyone else," Paige added. "We've seen for ourselves what can happen when the sword gets into the hands of someone it doesn't belong to."

"What do you mean, you're seen it for yourselves?" Chris asked. "When? Who?"

As Piper rolled her eyes at her sisters' matching smirks, Paige answered, "Oh, when we first found the sword, your mom went a little crazy with the power trip."

Wyatt gave an incredulous laugh as Chris exclaimed, "What? You never told us that!"

"Hey," Piper said with mock irritation, "if we told you the story of every time someone in this family has been evil under the influence, we'd never leave the house. But you," she said to Chris, "need to finish getting ready and go to school, and you" — to Wyatt — "need to go to a volcano and then get to school yourself. So get moving!"

They hustled. Piper assumed Paige would head to Magic School herself after orbing Phoebe home, but instead her youngest sister reappeared in the sunroom as Piper was picking up the Book of Shadows to return it to the attic.

"Hold on," Paige said. "I have an idea." Taking the book, she flipped through it until she found what she needed. She recited Grams's spell: "Creature low, vile and base, come right now to this place."

An annoyed and offended Penka reappeared the Manor. "Well — that was rude!"

"You want to get on our good side?" Paige asked. "What are you doing this afternoon? I'm going to need a little demonic assistance."