“From me?” I said. What was she talking about? I looked around at the crowd. For some reason, I suddenly regretted not having this conversation in private after all. “Why would he want to protect them from me? Was he afraid I’d make them all stop believing in him or something, because if so, making the entire city depend on me for food, support, and rescue was probably a bad idea. Heck, I’m the only one that can go in and out of the city! If he really did want to stop me, then he’s more incompetent than I thought!” I ignored Alek’s angry glare at my final remark and stared only at Noel.

“That is all I am going to say about it right now. The Immortal must know that he has failed, but getting you to come up here to fight me was probably some form of success for him. If you want to know more, I recommend asking his Ikon,” said Noel.

“I tried, the kid’s even more incompetent than his master. You know I’ve had him tied up since yesterday, and tried to get him to ask his master some questions on my behalf, and do you know what he said? He said he can’t speak to his master, his master only speaks to him! Talk about a one sided relationship. The kid clearly needs some real friends,” I said. I made sure to taunt the demon prince with a smirk and some gestures. The stubborn Ikon was positively fuming.

Good, I thought to myself. Serves him right for only giving me the tiniest clue about ‘annihilation.’

“Listen, Cas, I’d love to sit here and keep answering your questions, but I have a mission, remember? Haven’t I proven my trustworthiness yet? Help me find what I’m looking for and I’ll tell answer the rest of your questions too,” said Noel.

“Not yet. But I do appreciate your cooperation. I have to say, I made this stage and assembled this crowd because I thought I’d make this into more of a spectacle, but you’ve been surprisingly cooperative. Don’t think anyone would object if I loosened your shackles a little bit,” I said. Noel’s hands finally moved a little as they were no longer stuck to her body. Her legs were still closed, and the arms couldn’t go too far, but it was definitely a more comfortable position to be in. “Right, there you go. Now, you’ve answered for the disappearing fairies and the besieged demons. It’s time you answered some questions for the elves too.” My expression was grim. Even though I had loosened her restraints, I still stepped forward a little bit, with a few spells at the ready, just in case she tried to take advantage of her new position. “Why, after everything he has done, and after seeing, no, experiencing his unstable and unreliable personality, did you sell your soul to the Immortal of Madness?”

Noel’s eyes flit past me. Over my shoulder. I could see her fingers beginning to fidget. I clamped down on them, but it didn’t look like she’d been casting a spell. Just nervous. This wasn’t a question she wanted to answer. No. There was something else.

“Answer me, Noel,” I said, getting right up in front of her face. Like before, I’d kept my voice unreasonably high, both as an intimidation tactic, and to make sure the crowd could hear what I was saying.

Noel opened her mouth a little. She stared at me, sighed, and mumbled something. I didn’t hear what she said. But then she continued more loudly. Too loudly. “Have you taught all of these people about knowledge and wisdom? You know, the secret to your magic. The thing that could make anybody a magic user. Have you told them about it?”

I frowned. I looked over my shoulder. The humans did not react, but the demons, spirits, and fairies had confused looks on their faces. I could almost read their faces: they could use magic too? Of course they wanted to learn magic! The great elf should teach them magic, as soon as possible!

“There hasn’t been enough time,” I said, bringing my attention back to Noel. I was a little happy to see she hadn’t tried to escape with the old ‘look there’ trick. Not that it would have worked with all the spells I had cast around us.

“Then let me give them a little lesson on your behalf,” said Noel with a disarming smile. “Magic is governed by two very deceptively simple sounding concepts: knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge governs the kind of magic you can use, while wisdom decides how efficient it will be. There’s more to it than that, but for the purpose of this explanation, that should be good enough. When Cas and I first learned about these principles from an Immortal, Cas here had an idea. Were these truly the most fundamental concepts behind magic? He began asking questions about ‘knowledge’ and ‘wisdom’ which helped us turn this system into something we could manipulate. Without those questions, we might have had to rely on the Immortals for ‘knowledge’ and their training for ‘wisdom.’ But now, we began asking what those concepts meant, how we could get ‘knowledge’ and ‘wisdom’ for ourselves, and how we could manipulate our own understanding of the world around us in order to create magic.”

There were a few murmurs in the crowd. Noel had been given the translation magic by the Immortal of Madness, which meant everybody down below could understand her. Her explanation might have been a little complicated for people who haven’t heard about magic before, but it would get the gist across. Now, even demons, fairies, and spirits would be able to learn magic the right way. In the back of my mind, I remembered this meant I’d have to teach Kol this kind of magic too.

“That doesn’t answer my question,” I said, quelling the murmurs. “Why are you serving the person who separated you from your own family?”

Noel looked into my eyes. She didn’t speak for the longest time. And when she did speak, she did so slowly, with her eyes drifting to the side. “You asked those questions about our own knowledge, our own wisdom. You investigated the rules to the magic that we use. But did you forget, Cas? We are not the only ones who can use magic. There are others.”

“The Immortals,” I said. “Yes, I know their magic is different from our magic. They don’t seem to need knowledge or wisdom, and they can bestow their magic to their followers, magic that ignores all bounds of common sense and logic.”

“Are you sure?” she said.

“About what?” I said.

“That their magic is different,” she said.

I frowned. I could hear the wind whistling past. The day was overcast once again. Gloomy. Drab. “No.” My eyes widened slowly. “No, I can’t be sure. But, surely… it has to be. Mind control? Time travel? Yes, especially time travel! It’s one thing to go into the future, that is theoretically possible, but going back in time, that is impossible. No, only the Immortals can send us back in time, which means their magic doesn’t follow the same rules that ours does. They do not need ‘justified true beliefs’ to make the ‘knowledge’ necessary to make a powerful spell. They must be using a different system. A system that lets them ignore the rules and travel back in time!”

Noel gave me a strange look.

I knew my objection was a little complicated, but it wasn’t actually that complex. Think about it, if people could come back in time, where were they? Where were the time travelers among us? If it was possible to go back in time then I would surely have come back from the future to smack that smug looking Immortal of Madness right in the kisser!

“Going back in time?” said Noel. “An Immortal sent you back in time?”

Oops. I bit my lip in frustration. “That isn’t important. The important thing is, I know their system is different. If you were about to justify your allegiance to the Immortal of Madness by saying he was a great mentor to you, and that the knowledge he shared with you helped you overlook what he did to you, to us, then I’m sorry, I can’t accept that. The Noel I knew wouldn’t forgive somebody who had wrenched her away from her family, her loved ones, people who definitely suffered without our help. The Noel I know wouldn’t sell her forgiveness so cheaply!”

Noel’s gaze hardened. She glared at me in silence. Eventually, she chuckled. It was a strange chuckle, rolling in her throat like it was half-way between laughter and sobbing. “You are wrong about a lot of things, Cas. But I guess you did get one thing right.”

The stage shook. I glanced at my feet. The earth crumbled and fell to the side. I threw the others off the stage, cushioning their fall with air magic, and lunged forward myself. I reached out for Noel’s body, preparing my still life magic as well as the net of magic hands that I had wrapped around the place.

My magic hands collided into something. No, many things. Many strangely shaped things. They were shaped like hands, magic hands. Noel fell through the hollowed out bottom of the stage in a scene that was agonizingly familiar to me. I reached out for her through the debris, straining myself as much as I could in the brief moment that she fell past. My hand brushed past the air above her head, missing even the strands of her hair.

Noel fell down with a strange smile on her face, dissolving into the cloud of dirt and dust with her mouth moving to form a few more words. “You were right, I am not the Noel you knew.”