CHAPTER 13

Now, where was I before I got carried away by the Great Cosmic Sandwich? Ah yes, magic. Clerical magic came first, historically speaking. The gods feed on the worship of mortals and to help encourage this, it was in their interests to use some of their powers to help mortals achieve things down here. It made mortals more inclined to worship them if they felt they were getting something from it. Clerics grew powerful in this way, but there was a drawback: gods are often fickle and determining what might please them from one moment to the next was challenging, to say the least. That made their magic unreliable at times. Some people got fed up with this dance with the gods and postulated that mortals could achieve the same results by themselves with patience and study. They believed that the clerics' real source of power was not the gods themselves, but a power that the gods refined from the inter-planar repulsion forces. Simply put, that which allowed the planes of reality to remain separate and distinct. Over time, wizards learned to take this power for themselves, and their spells grew to match clerical prayers in power and intensity. There was a third group known as druids, who were worried about draining inter-planar forces by either gods or mortals. However vast and immeasurable these forces might be, they were surely finite. What if those forces were weakened as a result? What if that caused the planes of reality to touch in ways they were never meant to? What if it was happening already? What if that was why their world was constantly assailed by demons? What if the growing use of inter-planar repulsion forces as magic was bringing the demon realms somehow closer, thereby making it easier for them to sort of jump or climb up or whatever it was demons did to get here? Druids didn't use those forces for their magic. Instead, they used the 'Providence of Blessed Alycia, Mother of Nature' – the ancient name for the kind of subtle energy that emanated from Tempestria itself. This kind of energy, they believed, actually healed the cosmos, replenishing that which wizards and clerics took for themselves. The drawback: it simply wasn't as powerful, and so it never caught on except in the areas of healing and garden maintenance. Most druids did not seek to stop the other two flavours being used. They simply sought a state of balance where their magic could effectively recycle that which the others used. Unfortunately, no-one had found a way to make druid magic work in a way that could even remotely achieve this. In fact, it was generally believed to be impossible. Catriona knew better. She had seen it. What her Angel did on that fateful day was unlike anything wizards or clerics could achieve. Others might think it was an inexplicable miracle, but to her, the explanation was simple: druid magic, and she wanted to learn how it was done. It became her personal quest, for which her only lead was the staff. It didn't matter if others told her it was an 'unhealthy obsession borne out of grief and loss.' It didn't matter if nobody else thought her Angel was real. Catriona knew better. What hurt the most was the pity she would see on the faces of people she knew. Sympathy for the 'poor young woman' who had lost everything…including her mind. Still, she would not be swayed from her chosen course. It was her life, and if her parents had taught her anything, it was that she was damn well going to live it her way. There was, of course, one other individual who Cat knew could most likely back up her 'version of events' as people liked to call it: Michael. Needless to say, though, he didn't get out much, and he was currently unavailable, on account of having died in Daelen's latest Final Battle against Kullos. Which she felt was as inconvenient for her as she supposed it was for him to be stuck in his Deepest Slumber. It wasn't as if she could roll up to the front door of his tomb and knock very loudly until he woke up. For one thing, Daelen StormTiger had set up defences that, given the shadow warrior's power, she could not hope to counter. Besides, regardless of anything she might do, Michael would Sleep until the Time of Greatest Need and clearly, helping Catriona Redfletching did not count. Which once again left her with her staff. She began to research both its security and its history – something that took her time away from what her college tutors kept telling her she ought to be studying. She often wondered how they could possibly believe they knew better than her what she 'ought' to be studying.