A/N:. Thanks For the Reviews! Sorry that it took a while for me to update, I've been away from the computer for a while.

Chapter 3: The end of the beginning

Will

Will silently opened the door to Mary's flat, his head threatening to explode. Iorek… he was dead. As he opened the door, he got a shock. Mary was standing in the doorway, and she looked if she had been waiting for him.

' I've got to tell you something important!' Said Mary, as Will was about to say the exact same thing.

Will walked into the room and sat down in an armchair. His mum was asleep upstairs.

Will began and told Mary about Iorek's message. Mary said nothing. Her mind was still reeling from what she had seen. Iorek had told Will almost the same thing. They were here. And she knew all too well that they were the ones that killed Iorek.

Will listened to Mary's story, about the dream and the Mulefa. And what Xaphania had said to him came back.

"A friend of yours has already taken the first steps."

He knew that friend was Mary. The realization blossomed inside him like a flower growing in springtime.

He could learn to visit other worlds.

Lyra

Lyra sighed, depressed. She could still hear the noise of the party. At least they were having fun.

She unlatched the lock on her window and began to climb down. It reminded her of when she was younger, and used to climb over the roofs of Jordan and have fights with the clay-burners children. She seemed to be a whole different person now. She couldn't imagine herself doing anything like that, not any more.

Lyra walked along a road, deep in thought. The people in the party, the whole building was too much. She needed a place to think, to be on her own. The botanic gardens.

She walked over to there, the cool breeze blowing her hair. She turned the key in the lock. The gate swung open.

She sat down on the bench, and just as she did, a creature with red-gold fur flowed over to her like water.

Pan?

Then, the creature began to change.

This was no daemon.

Mulefa

The mulefa were frightened, and with good reason. Things that looked like tualapi were behaving strangely. They were not attacking villages, but instead the wheel-pod trees. There were more of them now, and the sraf went straight down into the flowers, and so they grew. But these creatures, they were new. They had brought down three trees and attacked their supplies. And there were only three of them. They had learnt little, except that there were five of them and they could change at will, into anything they wanted.

They called themselves The Five.

Mary

Mary was trying to get into Lyra's world to warn her about the Five. The mulefa had managed to speak to her again, and told her that they were called The Five, but then the zalif who had been talking to her had had to quickly wheel itself away from a huge lion. It was difficult, and risky. She felt as if she was on a lifeline, and she couldn't let go, or she'd die. But she could see Lyra, sitting on a bench in the Botanical Gardens.

As the mental mist cleared, she could see that Lyra was frightened. And there was a merciless creature closing in for the kill.

Mary knew what it was, and what it was going to do. It was one of The Five, and it was about to kill Lyra.